Conveners
Plenary 1
- Andrew Long (Rice University)
We investigate a novel gravitational wave (GW) production mechanism from gravitons generated during the pre-thermal phase of cosmic reheating, where the energy density is dominated by non-thermalized inflaton decay products, dubbed reheatons. We consider multiple production channels, including: i) pure inflaton-inflaton annihilation, ii) graviton Bremsstrahlung from inflaton decay, iii)...
Cosmological collider signals of primordial non-Gaussianity arise at tree level when an extra scalar has Hubble mass during inflation. We critically review the formalism finding that a large class of inflationary theories, based on Planck-scale physics, predict a scalar bi-spectrum around the gravitational floor level. This mild signal arises for example in R22 gravity, in the regime where its...
