Primordial tensor modes of the early Universe

Abstract

We study cosmological tensor perturbations on a quantized background within the hybrid quantization approach. In particular, we consider a flat, homogeneous and isotropic spacetime and small tensor inhomogeneities on it. We truncate the action to second order in the perturbations. The dynamics is ruled by a homogeneous scalar constraint. We carry out a canonical transformation in the system where the Hamiltonian for the tensor perturbations takes a canonical form. The new tensor modes now admit a standard Fock quantization with a unitary dynamics. We then combine this representation with a generic quantum scheme for the homogeneous sector. We adopt a Born-Oppenheimer ansatz for the solutions to the constraint operator, previously employed to study the dynamics of scalar inhomogeneities. We analyze the approximations that allow us to recover, on the one hand, a Schr\"odinger equation similar to the one emerging in the dressed metric approach and, on the other hand, the ones necessary for the effective evolution equations of these primordial tensor modes within the hybrid approach to be valid. Finally, we consider loop quantum cosmology as an example where these quantization techniques can be applied and compare with other approaches.