Robert Caldwell (Dartmouth)

Date: Tue. March 7th, 2017, 11:00 am-12:00 pm
Location: Miller room

Cosmology with Flavor-Space Locked Fields

We present new models of cosmic acceleration built from a cosmological SU(2) field in a flavor-space locked configuration. We show that such fields are gravitationally birefringent, and absorb and re-emit gravitational waves through the phenomenon of gravitational wave — gauge field oscillations. As a result, a cosmological SU(2) field leaves a unique imprint on both long-wavelength gravitational waves of primordial origin as well as high frequency waves produced by astrophysical sources. We show that these effects may be detected in the future using the cosmic microwave background and gravitational wave observatories.