Stochastic gravitational waves from modulated reheating
Abstract
Abstract We investigate scalar-induced stochastic gravitational waves from adiabatic curvature perturbations sourced by a spectator field via the modulated reheating mechanism. We consider a spectator scalar with Higgs-like couplings and inflaton decay via shift symmetric dimension-five operators. The spectator is assumed to be in the Sitter vacuum and it sources blue-tilted, strongly non-Gaussian curvature perturbations which can dominate the spectrum on small scales k ≫ Mpc -1 . We find that the setup could generate a gravitational wave signal testable by surveys like BBO and DECIGO but only for large coupling values not expected in low-energy particle physics setups that can be perturbatively extrapolated up to the inflationary scale.
Fields of Study & Subjects
Gas Dynamics and Kinetic Theory
Geophysics and Gravity Measurements
Meteorological Phenomena and Simulations
Publication details
- Journal / source
- Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics
- Publisher
- IOP Publishing
- Volume
- 2026
- Issue
- 04
- Pages
- 046–046
- Publication date
- 1 April 2026
- Language
- EN