Relic gravitational waves produced after preheating

Abstract

We show that gravitational radiation is produced quite efficiently in interactions of classical waves created by resonant decay of a coherently oscillating field. For simple models of chaotic inflation in which the inflaton interacts with another scalar field, we find that today's ratio of energy density in gravitational waves per octave to the critical density of the universe can be as large as 10^{-12} at the maximal wavelength of order 10^{5} cm. In the pure $\lambda\phi^4$ model, the maximal today's wavelength of gravitational waves produced by this mechanism is of order 10^6 cm, close to the upper bound of operational LIGO and TIGA frequencies. The energy density of waves in this model, though, is likely to be well below the sensitivity of LIGO or TIGA at such frequencies. We discuss possibility that in other inflationary models interaction of classical waves can lead to an even stronger gravitational radiation background.