Gravity waves goodbye
| dc.creator | Zibin, J. P. | |
| dc.creator | Scott, Douglas | |
| dc.creator | White, Martin | |
| dc.date | 1999-04-18 | |
| dc.date.accessioned | 2026-07-07T02:31:15Z | |
| dc.date.available | 2026-07-07T02:31:15Z | |
| dc.description | The detection of a stochastic background of long-wavelength gravitational waves (tensors) in the cosmic microwave background (CMB) anisotropy would be an invaluable probe of the high energy physics of the early universe. Unfortunately a combination of factors now makes such a detection seem unlikely: the vast majority of the CMB signal appears to come from density perturbations (scalars) - detailed fits to current observations indicate a tensor-to-scalar quadrupole ratio of T/S < 0.5 for the simplest models; and on the theoretical side the best-motivated inflationary models seem to require very small T/S. Unfortunately CMB temperature anisotropies can only probe a gravity wave signal down to T/S \sim 10% and optimistic assumptions about polarization of the CMB only lower this another order of magnitude. | |
| dc.description | 5 pages, 1 figure, Gravity Research Foundation essay | |
| dc.identifier | https://arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/9904228 | |
| dc.identifier | http://arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/9904228 | |
| dc.identifier.uri | http://salesiana.dossiersoluciones.com/handle/123456789/14096 | |
| dc.subject | Astrophysics | |
| dc.title | Gravity waves goodbye | |
| dc.type | text |