Gravitational-wave signatures of gravito-electromagnetic couplings

Abstract

Gravitational waves (GWs) can undoubtedly serve as a messenger from the early Universe acting as well as a novel probe of the underlying gravity theory. In this work, motivated by one-loop vacuum-polarization effects on curved spacetime, we investigate a gravitational theory with non-minimal curvature-electromagnetic coupling terms of the form ξR/MPl2FμνFμν, where MPl is the reduced Planck mass, R is the scalar curvature and Fμν the Faraday tensor, being responsible for the generation of primordial electromagnetic fields. We study then the GW signatures of such coupling terms deriving in particular for the first time to the best of our knowledge the modified tensor modes equation of motion. Remarkably, we find a universal infrared (IR) frequency scaling f5 of the electromagnetically induced GW (EMIGW) signal, which, depending on the energy scale of inflation, the duration of inflation and reheating as well as the dynamical behaviour of the coupling function ξ, can be well within the detection sensitivity bands of GW experiments such as SKA, LISA, ET and BBO, being thus potentially detectable in the future by GW observatories.