The Imprint of Gravitational Waves in Models Dominated by a Dynamical Cosmic Scalar Field

Abstract

An alternative to the standard cold dark matter model has been recently proposed in which a significant fraction of the energy density of the universe is due to a dynamical scalar field ($Q$) whose effective equation-of-state differs from that of matter, radiation or cosmological constant ($Λ$). In this paper, we determine how the Q-component modifies the primordial inflation gravitational wave (tensor metric) contribution to the cosmic microwave background anisotropy and, thereby, one of the key tests of inflation.

15 pages, 14 figures, revtex, submitted to Phys. Rev. D