Interaction of Electromagnetic field with a Gravitational wave in Minkowski and de-Sitter space-time

Abstract

It is important to re-examine some of the interactions of gravitational waves with matter due to the recent discovery of the waves in LIGO. In a previous paper with Morales, interaction of gravitational waves was studied with scalar and neutrino fields in Minkowski space-time. In this paper, we find that electromagnetic waves have a similar interaction with gravitational wave in a flat background, and we comment on the implications of this for a gravitational wave detector. Primordial gravitational waves were generated in the early universe and thus it is important to study interaction of the gravitational waves in cosmological backgrounds. In this paper we discuss the interaction of electromagnetic waves and gravitational waves in a de-Sitter background. We find that the electromagnetic wave is perturbed and modulated. This result is new and will be useful in studying inhomogeneities in Cosmic Microwave Background.