Enhanced primordial gravitational waves from a stiff post-inflationary era due to an oscillating inflaton

TL;DR

This paper explores how a stiff post-inflationary era caused by an oscillating inflaton can significantly boost primordial gravitational wave signals, potentially observable by future detectors like the Einstein Telescope.

Contribution

It demonstrates that higher-order scalar potentials can produce a detectable GW spectrum without destabilizing Big Bang Nucleosynthesis, advancing models of inflationary gravitational wave production.

Findings

Boosted GW spectrum up to ^{-11} at 100 Hz for pprox 1

GW signals overlap with future observatory sensitivities

Mechanism allows inference of inflation scale and potential shape

Abstract

We investigate two classes of inflationary models, which lead to a stiff period after inflation that boosts the signal of primordial gravitational waves (GWs). In both families of models studied, we consider an oscillating scalar condensate, which when far away from the minimum it is overdamped by a warped kinetic term, a la $\alpha$-attractors. This leads to successful inflation. The oscillating condensate is in danger of becoming fragmented by resonant effects when non-linearities take over. Consequently, the stiff phase cannot be prolonged enough to enhance primordial GWs at frequencies observable in the near future for low orders of the envisaged scalar potential. However, this is not the case for a higher-order scalar potential. Indeed, we show that this case results in a boosted GW spectrum that overlaps with future observations without generating too much GW radiation to de-stabilise Big Bang Nucleosynthesis. For example, taking $\alpha={\cal O}(1)$, we find that the GW signal can be safely enhanced up to $\Omega_{\rm GW}(f)\sim 10^{-11}$ at frequency $f\sim 10^2\,$Hz, which will be observable by the Einstein Telescope (ET). Our mechanism ends up with a characteristic GW spectrum, which if observed, can lead to the determination of the inflation energy scale, the reheating temperature and the shape (steepness) of the scalar potential around the minimum.