The next cosmology seminar takes place on Friday 24th of November, seminar room E349 at 2pm. Our guest speaker will be Bryce Cyr from the Jodrell Bank Centre for Astrophysics at the University of Manchester (Manchester, United Kingdom).
At 2pm, room E349, Bryce Cyr (University of Manchester), will be talking about
Synergies between gravitational waves and CMB spectral distortions
In this talk, I will discuss various ways in which distortions to the frequency spectrum of the cosmic microwave background can be used to place constraints on stochastic backgrounds of gravitational waves. After a brief overview of spectral distortion theory, I will show how enhancements to the small-scale primordial power spectrum of curvature perturbations can induce sizeable distortions. Even in the absence of enhancements, a nearly-scale invariant spectrum presents a target well within reach of next generation experiments. Additionally, I will highlight how the presence of primordial tensor modes will also lead to an inevitable (although small) distortion signature. I will then apply this formalism to a model of scalar induced gravitational waves (SIGWs), showcasing how constraints on the primordial scalar power spectrum can be mapped to the gravitational wave parameter space for these models. Time permitting, I will also show our updated formalism can be used to improve constraints on the parameter space of primordial black holes.