Circular polarization of primordial gravitational waves in string-inspired inflationary cosmology

Abstract

We study a mechanism to produce the circular polarization of primordial gravitational waves. The circular polarization is generated during the superinflation driven by the Gauss-Bonnet term in the string-inspired cosmology. The instability in the tensor mode caused by the Gauss-Bonnet term and the parity violation due to the gravitational Chern-Simons term are the essential ingredients of the mechanism. We also discuss detectability of the produced circular polarization of gravitational waves. It turns out that the simple model of single-field inflation contradicts cosmic microwave background (CMB) observations. To circumvent this difficulty, we propose a two-field inflation model. In this two-field model, the circular polarization of gravitational waves is created in the frequency range designed by the big-bang observer (BBO) or the deci-hertz gravitational-wave observatory (DECIGO).