SciPost Submission Page
Gravitational waves from the early universe
by Rafael R. Lino dos Santos, Linda M. van Manen
Submission summary
| Authors (as registered SciPost users): | Rafael Robson Lino dos Santos · Linda van Manen |
| Submission information | |
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| Preprint Link: | https://arxiv.org/abs/2212.05594v2 (pdf) |
| Date submitted: | 2023-10-30 21:49 |
| Submitted by: | Lino dos Santos, Rafael Robson |
| Submitted to: | SciPost Physics Lecture Notes |
| Ontological classification | |
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| Academic field: | Physics |
| Specialties: |
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| Approaches: | Theoretical, Phenomenological |
Abstract
Ongoing and future gravitational wave collaborations explore different frequency ranges of the gravitational wave spectrum, probing different stages of the early universe and Beyond Standard Model physics. Due to the very high energies involved, accelerators cannot probe these earlier stages. Therefore, until some years ago, knowledge about new physics was limited and relied on bounds from CMB observations and theoretical assumptions about higher energy scales. While models could be constrained by CMB data, they were left unconstrained at shorter wavelength scales. Nonetheless, each one of these models has a gravitational wave density spectrum at these shorter wavelength scales that can ultimately be compared to data from ground-based, space-born, and pulsar timing array searches. These lecture notes review the formalism of gravitational waves in General Relativity and introduce stochastic gravitational waves, with a focus on primordial sources and commenting on detection efforts. These lecture notes were inspired by the course "Gravitational Waves from the Early Universe" given at the 27th W.E. Heraeus "Saalburg" Summer School 2021 by Valerie Domcke.
Author comments upon resubmission
Current status:
Reports on this Submission
Strengths
The authors have improved the lecture notes, and the addition of material on interferometers and pulsar timing is welcome. An explanation of the Hellings-Downs curve is very topical in view of the latest results strongly supporting the presence of a stochastic GW background.
Weaknesses
See attached file.
Report
The level of the discussion is still uneven, and there are still quite a few places, listed in the attachment, where these notes do not meet the criteria of being correct, systematic and intelligible. I regret that I cannot recommend the notes for publication in SciPost.