4.6 Article

Detecting primordial features with LISA

Journal

Publisher

IOP Publishing Ltd
DOI: 10.1088/1475-7516/2022/07/020

Keywords

gravitational waves / experiments; gravitational waves / theory; primordial gravitational waves (theory); inflation

Funding

  1. European Research Council under the European Union [758792]
  2. Contrato de Atraccion de Talento (Modalidad 1) de la Comunidad de Madrid (Spain) [2017-T1/TIC-5520]
  3. IFT Centro de Excelencia Severo Ochoa [SEV-2]
  4. STFC [ST/P000762/1, ST/T000791/1]
  5. European Union [724659 MassiveCosmo ERC- 2016 -COG]
  6. European Research Council (ERC) [758792] Funding Source: European Research Council (ERC)

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In this study, the detection prospects of oscillations in the frequency profile of the stochastic gravitational wave background are investigated using the upcoming space-based gravitational wave observatory LISA. It is found that the oscillations can be reconstructed with LISA, and it is confirmed that they are a worthwhile target for future detection efforts and offer a key for experimentally testing inflation at small scales.
Oscillations in the frequency profile of the stochastic gravitational wave back-ground are a characteristic prediction of small-scale features during inflation. In this paper we present a first investigation of the detection prospects of such oscillations with the upcoming space-based gravitational wave observatory LISA. As a proof of principle, we show for a selection of feature signals that the oscillations can be reconstructed with LISA, employing a method based on principal component analysis. We then perform a Fisher forecast for the parameters describing the oscillatory signal. For a sharp feature we distinguish between the contributions to the stochastic gravitational wave background induced during inflation and in the post-inflationary period, which peak at different frequencies. We find that for the latter case the amplitude of the oscillation is expected to be measurable with < 10% accuracy if the corresponding peak satisfies h(2)omega(GW) >= 10(-12)-10(-11), while for inflationary-era gravitational waves a detection of the oscillations requires a higher peak amplitude of h(2)omega(GW), as the oscillations only appear on the UV tail of the spectrum. For a resonant feature the detection prospects with LISA are maximised if the frequency of the oscillation falls into the range omega(log) = 4 to 10. Our results confirm that oscillations in the frequency profile of the stochastic gravitational wave background are a worthwhile target for future detection efforts and offer a key for experimentally testing inflation at small scales.

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