The invisible low-frequency gravitons and the audio band

Abstract

The low-frequency gravitons correspond to typical wavelengths that left the Hubble radius during the early inflationary stages of expansion and reentered after matter radiation equality. Consequently the temperature and the polarization anisotropies of the cosmic microwave background constrain the tensor-to-scalar-ratio in the aHz region but since the audio band and the MHz domain are sensitive to the post-inflationary expansion rate, the low-frequency determinations of the tensor-to-scalar-ratio can be combined with the high-frequency constraints. In this framework we examine the possibility that the low-frequency gravitons remain invisible in the aHz region but are still potentially detectable at much higher frequencies. Because the number of $e$-folds associated with the exit of the cosmic microwave background wavelengths depends both on the slow-roll parameters and on the total expansion rate after inflation, this approach leads to a set of lower bounds on the tensor-to-scalar-ratio.