Production of gravitational waves during preheating in the Starobinsky inflationary model

Abstract

The production of GWs during preheating in the Starobinsky model with a nonminimally coupled auxiliary scalar field is studied through the lattice simulation in this paper. We find that the GW spectrum $\Omega_{\rm gw}$ grows fast with the increase of the absolute value of coupling parameter $\xi$. This is because the resonant bands become broad with the increase of $|\xi|$. When $\xi<0$, $\Omega_{\rm gw}$ begins to grow once the inflation ends and grows faster than the case of $\xi>0$. $\Omega_{\rm gw}$ reaches the maximum at $\xi=-20$ ($\xi=42$ for the case $\xi>0$) and then decreases with slight oscillation. Furthermore we find that the GWs produced in the era of preheating satisfy the limits from the Planck and next-generation CMB experiments.