Waterfall stiff period can generate observable primordial gravitational waves

Abstract

A toy-model is studied, which considers two flat directions meeting at an enhanced symmetry point such that they realise the usual hybrid inflation mechanism. The kinetic term of the waterfall field features a pole at its Planckian vacuum expectation value (VEV), as with α-attractors. Consequently, after the phase transition which terminates hybrid inflation, the waterfall field never rolls to its VEV. Instead, it drives a stiff period, where the barotropic parameter of the Universe w ≈ 1/2 results in a peak in the spectrum of primordial gravitational waves, which will be observable by the forthcoming LISA mission as well as by Advanced LIGO.