Large Gravitational Waves and Lyth Bound in Multi Brane Inflation

Abstract

It is shown that multi M5-brane inflation in heterotic M-theory gives rise to a detectable gravitational wave power spectrum with tensor fraction $r$ typically larger than the projected experimental sensitivity, $r_{exp} = 0.01$. A measurable gravitational wave power spectrum entails a large inflationary energy scale and a super-Planckian inflaton variation. They present serious problems for particle theory model building resp. a reliable effective field theory description. These problems are eased or even absent in multi-brane inflation models and multi M5-brane inflation, in particular.