Stochastic gravitational waves from a new type of modified Chaplygin gas

Abstract

We propose a new scenario for the early universe where there is a smooth transition between an early de Sitter-like phase and a radiation dominated era. In this model, the matter content is modelled by a new type of generalised Chaplygin gas for the early universe, with an underlying scalar field description. We study the gravitational waves generated by the quantum fluctuations. In particular, we calculate the gravitational wave power spectrum, as it would be measured today, following the method of the Bogoliubov coefficients. We show that the high frequencies region of the spectrum depends strongly on one of the parameters of the model. On the other hand, we use the number of e-folds, along with the power spectra and spectral index of the scalar perturbations, to constrain the model observationally.