Inflation, gravitational waves and the cosmic microwave background: reconciling CDM with COBE?

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The production of tensor (gravitational wave) perturbations in a universe where inflation is driven by a scalar field interacting via an exponential potential is examined. In such a scenario, the Universe undergoes a power-law rather than exponential expansion, and density perturbations have a power-law but non-scale-invariant spectrum. It is shown that models which lead to only slight departures from scale-invariant density perturbations also produce significant gravitational wave perturbations that lead to significant anisotropies in the cosmic microwave background