Post-inflation increase of the cosmological tensor-to-scalar perturbation ratio

Abstract

We investigate the possibility that the amplitude of scalar density perturbations may be damped after inflation. This would imply that CMB anisotropies do not uniquely fix the amplitude of the perturbations generated during inflation and that the present tensor-to-scalar ratio might be larger than produced in inflation, increasing the prospects of detection of primordial gravitational radiation. It turns out, however, that the damping of density perturbations is hard to achieve.