Quantization of the nonstandard propagating gravitational waves in the cosmological background

TL;DR

This paper quantizes nonstandard gravitational waves with a friction term in a cosmological setting, revealing quantum effects on luminosity distance and initial conditions, which can inform observational constraints.

Contribution

It introduces a quantum framework for gravitational waves with a friction term, analyzing its impact on luminosity distance and primordial spectra in cosmology.

Findings

Quantum graviton number non-conservation affects GW luminosity distance.

Derived an analytical power spectrum for GWs with friction in de Sitter space.

Proposes observational methods to constrain the friction term using GW data.

Abstract

Detections of gravitational wave (GW) stimulate the discussion of how GWs propagate in the expanding Universe. General relativity predicts that GWs are massless and propagate at the speed of light with no extra friction term, which relates to the attenuation of GWs, while some modified gravities may predict a different behavior. The mass and speed terms can be tightly constrained by the GW150914-like and GW170817/GRB 170817A events, respectively. However, the friction term remaining unconstrained. In this paper, we quantize the nonstandard propagating gravitational waves with nonzero friction term in the cosmological background, and study the influence of the friction term on the GW luminosity distance in quantum level, and the initial conditions of perturbations given by inflation. We find the quantum nature of the difference between GW and electromagnetic luminosity distance is graviton particle number non-conservation. For the initial conditions, we obtain an analytical expression of the power spectrum with nonzero friction term for the de Sitter background. In observations, both the GW luminosity distance and primordial GWs can be used to constrain the friction term.