TY - JOUR
T1 - Signatures of a graviton mass in the cosmic microwave background
AU - Dubovsky, Sergei
AU - Flauger, Raphael
AU - Starobinsky, Alexei
AU - Tkachev, Igor
PY - 2010/1/21
Y1 - 2010/1/21
N2 - There exist consistent low energy effective field theories describing gravity in the Higgs phase that allow the coexistence of massive gravitons and the conventional 1/r potential of gravity. In an effort to constrain the value of the graviton mass in these theories, we study the tensor contribution to the CMB temperature anisotropy and polarization spectra in the presence of a nonvanishing graviton mass. We find that the observation of a B-mode signal consistent with the spectrum predicted by inflationary models would provide the strongest limit yet on the mass of an elementary particle-a graviton-at a level of m10-30eV(10Mpc)-1. We also find that a graviton mass in the range between (10Mpc)-1 and (10kpc)-1 leads to interesting modifications of the polarization spectrum. The characteristic signature of a graviton mass in this range would be a plateau in the B-mode spectrum up to angular multipoles of ∼100. For even larger values of the graviton mass the tensor contribution to the CMB spectra becomes strongly suppressed.
AB - There exist consistent low energy effective field theories describing gravity in the Higgs phase that allow the coexistence of massive gravitons and the conventional 1/r potential of gravity. In an effort to constrain the value of the graviton mass in these theories, we study the tensor contribution to the CMB temperature anisotropy and polarization spectra in the presence of a nonvanishing graviton mass. We find that the observation of a B-mode signal consistent with the spectrum predicted by inflationary models would provide the strongest limit yet on the mass of an elementary particle-a graviton-at a level of m10-30eV(10Mpc)-1. We also find that a graviton mass in the range between (10Mpc)-1 and (10kpc)-1 leads to interesting modifications of the polarization spectrum. The characteristic signature of a graviton mass in this range would be a plateau in the B-mode spectrum up to angular multipoles of ∼100. For even larger values of the graviton mass the tensor contribution to the CMB spectra becomes strongly suppressed.
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U2 - 10.1103/PhysRevD.81.023523
DO - 10.1103/PhysRevD.81.023523
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:77649227376
SN - 1550-7998
VL - 81
JO - Physical Review D - Particles, Fields, Gravitation and Cosmology
JF - Physical Review D - Particles, Fields, Gravitation and Cosmology
IS - 2
M1 - 023523
ER -