Weak Gravity Conjecture in the sky: gravitational waves from preheating in Einstein-Maxwell-Scalar EFT

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Cheng, Jiaxin, Tokareva, Anna
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
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author Cheng, Jiaxin
Tokareva, Anna
author_facet Cheng, Jiaxin
Tokareva, Anna
contents The effective field theory (EFT) concept provides a necessary tool for obtaining general predictions of low-energy theory valid below its unitarity-breaking scale (cutoff scale). Early Universe inflation and subsequent reheating could be a unique setup for testing potentially observable effects coming from the derivative expansion of the corresponding EFT around the flat space vacuum. In this work, we consider an EFT describing perturbative reheating dominated by the decay of inflaton to photons caused by the dimension-5 operator $ϕF_{μν} F^{μν}$. We compute the graviton production during reheating and high frequency gravitational wave signal due to the bremsstrahlung effect in the presence of $R_{μνλρ}F^{μν} F^{λρ}$ operator. It may lead to the dominant contribution at high momenta if the EFT cutoff is lower than the Planck mass. Assuming the general consequences of the unitarity and causality constraints, which imply that all EFT operators should be present, and be suppressed by the scales following from the dimension analysis, we obtain the observational constraints (CMB bound for the dark radiation) on the mass of the inflaton and UV cutoff of gravity. We find that for the typical parameters of large field inflation models, the gravitational cutoff scale cannot be lower than $10^{15}$ GeV.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2512_10890
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Weak Gravity Conjecture in the sky: gravitational waves from preheating in Einstein-Maxwell-Scalar EFT
Cheng, Jiaxin
Tokareva, Anna
High Energy Physics - Theory
General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology
High Energy Physics - Phenomenology
The effective field theory (EFT) concept provides a necessary tool for obtaining general predictions of low-energy theory valid below its unitarity-breaking scale (cutoff scale). Early Universe inflation and subsequent reheating could be a unique setup for testing potentially observable effects coming from the derivative expansion of the corresponding EFT around the flat space vacuum. In this work, we consider an EFT describing perturbative reheating dominated by the decay of inflaton to photons caused by the dimension-5 operator $ϕF_{μν} F^{μν}$. We compute the graviton production during reheating and high frequency gravitational wave signal due to the bremsstrahlung effect in the presence of $R_{μνλρ}F^{μν} F^{λρ}$ operator. It may lead to the dominant contribution at high momenta if the EFT cutoff is lower than the Planck mass. Assuming the general consequences of the unitarity and causality constraints, which imply that all EFT operators should be present, and be suppressed by the scales following from the dimension analysis, we obtain the observational constraints (CMB bound for the dark radiation) on the mass of the inflaton and UV cutoff of gravity. We find that for the typical parameters of large field inflation models, the gravitational cutoff scale cannot be lower than $10^{15}$ GeV.
title Weak Gravity Conjecture in the sky: gravitational waves from preheating in Einstein-Maxwell-Scalar EFT
topic High Energy Physics - Theory
General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology
High Energy Physics - Phenomenology
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2512.10890