Primordial Gravitational Waves in Generalized Palatini Gravity

Abstract

Extended Palatini gravity is the metric-affine gravity theory characterized by zero torsion, nonzero metricity and a quadratic of the antisymmetric Ricci curvature. It reduces dynamically to general relativity plus a geometric Proca field. In this work, we study imprints of the geometric Proca field in the gravitational waves . Our results show that the geometric Proca leaves significant signatures in the gravitational wave signal, and gravitational wave energy density is large enough to be detectable by the next upgrade of the existing GW detectors. Our results, if confirmed observationally, will be an indication that the gravity could well non-Riemannian in nature.