# Gravitational Waves from Peaks

## TL;DR

This paper proposes a new mechanism for generating gravitational waves from non-spherical overdensity peaks in the early universe, which do not form primordial black holes but produce faint gravitational waves.

## Contribution

It introduces a novel source of gravitational waves from non-primordial black hole peaks, expanding understanding of early universe gravitational wave production.

## Key findings

- Gravitational waves from non-primordial peaks are about two orders of magnitude weaker.
- These waves are complementary to second-order scalar perturbation sources.
- The mechanism provides insight into early universe gravitational wave signals.

## Abstract

We discuss a novel mechanism to generate gravitational waves in the early universe. A standard way to produce primordial black holes is to enhance at small-scales the overdensity perturbations generated during inflation. The latter, upon horizon re-entry, collapse into black holes. They must be sizeable enough and are therefore associated to rare peaks. There are however less sizeable and much less rare overdensity peaks which do not end up forming primordial black holes and have a non-spherical shape. Upon collapse, they possess a time-dependent non-vanishing mass quadrupole which gives rise to the generation of gravitational waves. By their nature, such gravitational waves are complementary to those sourced at second-order by the very same scalar perturbations responsible for the formation of the primordial black holes. Their amplitude is nevertheless typically about two orders of magnitude smaller and therefore hardly measurable.