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Full-Text Articles in Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Gravitons To Photons--Attenuation Of Gravitational Waves, Preston Jones, Douglas Singleton
Gravitons To Photons--Attenuation Of Gravitational Waves, Preston Jones, Douglas Singleton
Publications
In this essay, we examine the response of an Unruh–DeWitt (UD) detector (a quantum two-level system) to a gravitational wave background. The spectrum of the UD detector is of the same form as some scattering processes or three body decays such as muon-electron scattering or muon decay. Based on this similarity, we propose that the UD detector response implies a “decay” or attenuation of gravitons, G, into photons, γ, via G+G→γ+γ or G→γ+γ+G. Over large distances such a decay/attenuation may have consequences in regard to the detection of gravitational waves.
Gravitational-Wave Mediated Preheating, Stephon Alexander, Sam Cormack, Antonino Marcianò, Nicolás Yunes
Gravitational-Wave Mediated Preheating, Stephon Alexander, Sam Cormack, Antonino Marcianò, Nicolás Yunes
Dartmouth Scholarship
We propose a new preheating mechanism through the coupling of the gravitational field to both the inflaton and matter fields, without direct inflaton–matter couplings. The inflaton transfers power to the matter fields through interactions with gravitational waves, which are exponentially enhanced due to an inflation–graviton coupling. One such coupling is the product of the inflaton to the Pontryagin density, as in dynamical Chern–Simons gravity. The energy scales involved are constrained by requiring that preheating happens fast during matter domination.