Speaker
Description
A significant fraction of the observable stochastic gravitational wave background can come from the early universe. The spectral shape reveals information about the nature of the early universe and its magnetic fields. The relic gravitational wave spectrum is particularly sensitive to the time-dependence of the source and therefore reveals information about the generation mechanism of magnetic fields. Gravitational wave production is more effective on large length scales, making inflationary magnetogenesis an obvious candidate. Parity-violating processes such as axion inflation and in principle also the chiral magnetic effect directly imprint their helicity onto the circular polarization spectrum of gravitational waves. In my talk, I will present the results of three-dimensional numerical simulations of various generation mechanisms and how their time-dependence shapes the resulting gravitational wave field both spectrally and in real space.
