As we know that high energy phenomena like black hole mergers, neutron star mergers can create ripples in the spacetime continuum but what were the modes of GW creation during the initial phase of the universe where this large bodies did not existed. Can the inflation of the universe play a role in creating GWs?
Hello, Deepanshu Chouhan. I think that, yes, inflation can be one of the sources. Inflation is a hypothetical period of exponential expansion of the universe in its first moments, which could have generated primordial GWs from quantum fluctuations of the metric tensor.
There are several other possible sources:
- Phase transitions, which are processes where the universe undergoes a change of state or symmetry, such as the electroweak or QCD transitions, which could have produced GWs from bubble nucleation, collisions, turbulence or magnetic fields.
- Topological defects such as stable configurations of fields that may form during phase transitions, such as cosmic strings, domain walls or monopoles, which could have emitted GWs from their dynamics or interactions.
- Primordial black holes, for example, hypothetical black holes that may have formed in the early universe from density fluctuations or collapse of topological defects, which could have generated GWs from their mergers or evaporation.
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