The following article is Open access

The Weyl tensor correlator in cosmological spacetimes

Published 5 December 2014 , , Citation Markus B. Fröb JCAP12(2014)010 DOI 10.1088/1475-7516/2014/12/010

1475-7516/2014/12/010

Abstract

We give a general expression for the Weyl tensor two-point function in a general Friedmann-Lemaître-Robertson-Walker spacetime. We work in reduced phase space for the perturbations, i.e., quantize only the dynamical degrees of freedom without adding any gauge-fixing term. The general formula is illustrated by a calculation in slow-roll single-field inflation to first order in the slow-roll parameters epsilon and δ, and the result is shown to have the correct de Sitter limit as epsilon, δ → 0. Furthermore, it is seen that the Weyl tensor correlation function in slow-roll does not suffer from infrared divergences, unlike the two-point functions of the metric and scalar field perturbations. Lastly, we show how to recover the usual tensor power spectrum from the Weyl tensor correlation function.

Export citation and abstract BibTeX RIS

Article funded by SCOAP. Content from this work may be used under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License. Any further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the title of the work, journal citation and DOI.

Please wait… references are loading.
10.1088/1475-7516/2014/12/010