The Power Spectrum Of Gravitational Waves In

Anisotropic Universe
Taimur Mohammadi,∗
Behrooz Malekolkalami,†

July 6, 2021
arXiv:2003.04161v3 [gr-qc] 5 Jul 2021

Abstract
One of the predictions from simple inflation models is a stochastic background of gravitational
waves (or literally what is called the Primordial Gravitational Waves (PGW)) with a nearly
scale–invariant spectrum. In this work, we consider these waves arising from perturbing the
Anisotropic background (Bianchi type–I) metric by focus on their power spectrums.The intended
frameworks are the Einstein’s and modified gravity frames. The investigations indicate that in
the modified gravity context, the results have more ability to adapt to physical conditions or
constraints. Especially, the scale–invariant character of the spectrum is much more pronounced in
the modified framework.

Keywords: Gravitational waves, Power spectrum, Quadratic action, Anisotropic metric.

1 Introduction
One of the central predictions of Einstein’s general theory of relativity is that Gravitational Waves (GW) will
be generated by accelerating masses [1, 2]. For decades, it was so difficult to analyze and to define the energy
and momentum carried by GW. The first direct observation, from merging massive black holes, reported On
September 14, 2015 [3] and this has become a renewed attention to detect new information in astronomy and
cosmology. The GW are very important physical process that can be studied to give us valuable information
about the dynamics of spacetime geometry and other mysteries. Among the many works done in this area are
e. g. [4]–[10]. Nowadays, the sources of GW are largely known, including gravitational collapse, coalescing
binaries, pulsars, rapidly spinning accreting neutron stars, and the stochastic background. PGW produced in
the early Universe are a type of stochastic background which emanate from regions of strong gravity and they
carry uncorrupted physical signatures of Early universe and its structure. These waves form an extremely large
number of weak, independent, and unresolved sources and this makes the waves have a random character. The
detection of such a background would have a profound impact on early Universe cosmology and other research
fields of physics such as high–energy physics which can includes high energies events, that will never be accessible
by other means.
One of the useful tool for studying and analyzing the stochastic waves is the spectral method due to their
random nature and our approach here is to use this tools. The reason for using the spectral method is that it
is generally for a periodic signal, by knowing the spectrum frequency and power of each harmonic contributing
to the signal, it can be analyzed into its component parts, and one reconstructs the signal from its component,
in which case the signal becomes more meaningful phase data. The PGW carry important information from
the earliest phases of the universe and due to the various Astrophysical sources contributions, the information
is disturbed. One of the important quantity in spectral methods to extract such information is the power
∗
Department of Physics, University of Kurdistan, P.O.Box 66177-15175, Sanandaj, Iran. Email:
t.mohammadi@uok.ac.ir
†
Department of Physics, University of Kurdistan, P.O.Box 66177-15175, Sanandaj, Iran. Email:
b.malakolkalami@uok.ac.ir

1
spectrum. Therefore, it can be said that by analyzing and extracting information from these waves, a snapshot
of the universe at that time can be provided. Also, the study and investigation of such background can help
us to have a relative scheme of energy scale of the early universe, duo to the Inflation energy scale is one of
the main challenge in theoretical and experimental (High Energy) physics.
In the present work, we study and analysis PGW produced by tensorial perturbation in the inflationary period
of universe. The background metric for the perturbations is taken to be the Bianchi type–I one. The evolution
equations for tensorial perturbations are presented in the Einstein and pure (Ricci scalar ) quadratic gravities.1
As mentioned, this analysis is performed from a spectral perspective. The study from another point of views
can be found in e. g. [14] in which propagation of classical GW is considered, or others as [15, 16, 17, 18].
The paper is organised as follows:
In section II, we introduce the motion equations of tensorial perturbations essential for the work. In section
III, we obtain the power spectrum of perturbations in Einstein’s and modified frameworks. The conclusions
are given in section IV.

2 Evolution Equations
In this section, we introduce the equations of motion for the tensorial perturbations arisen from the background
anisotropic Bianchi type–I metric given by

ds2 = ḡµν dxµ dxν = −dt2 + A2 dx2 + B 2 dy 2 − C 2 dz 2 , (1)

where A, B, C are the directional scale factors with A = B = C = a(t). Suppose this spacetime is perturbed
and the line element (1) changes as follows

ds′2 = gµν dxµ dxν = (ḡµν + hµν ) dxµ dxν = a2 −dτ 2 + dx2 + dy 2 − dz 2 + a2 hij dxi dxj ,


(2)

where τ is conformal time and hij = hij (τ, x) are the perturbations satisfying the: symmetric (hij =hji ),
traceless (hii = 0) and transverse (hji,j = 0) conditions.
The equations of motion for perturbations, in a general f (R) gravity, are obtained by variation of the
following action
√
 
1
Z
S = dτ dx −ḡ f (R) + Πij hij , (3)
2
where Πij is the anisotropic stress tensor[19]. For the isotropic perturbations (that is hij (τ, x, y, z) = h(τ, x, y, z) =
h(τ, x)) and the vacuum or perfect fluid (Πij = 0) cases, the equations of motion take the following form [20]
 
p ∂R
∂µ |ḡ| F (R) = 0, (4)
∂(∂µ h)

df(R)
where F (R) = . In the latter equation, the Ricci scalar corresponding to perturbed metric (2) is given
dR
by [21]
ḡ µν a−2  ′ 2 
R=− (∂µ h∂ν h) = h − (∂x h)2 − (∂y h)2 + (∂z h)2 , (5)
64πG 64πG
′
∂
where the prime is derivative with respect to conformal time, namely ( ≡ ∂τ ).
The motion equation (4) is treated for the two cases of f (R) = R and R2 , which by substituting them one
gets, respectively p 
∂µ |ḡ| ḡ µν ∂ν h = 0, (6)
p 
∂µ |ḡ| R ḡ µν ∂ν h = 0. (7)

3 The Power Spectrum

In this section, we first write down the motion equations for the tensorial perturbations in the Einstein’s and
pure quadratic gravities. Then, the Power Spectrums corresponding to the perturbations are presented.
1
One of the successful complete Quadratic gravity is Starobinsky model (f (R) = R + αR2 ) for Cosmic Inflation
which lead to curvature–squared corrections to the Einstein-–Hilbert action and as a form of f (R) modified gravity.
Other kinds of f (R) models can be found in e. g. [11, 12, 13].

2
3.1 Perturbations in Einstein Gravity
By substituting the background metric (1) into the equation (6), we get
′
!
′′ a ′
h − ∂x2 + ∂y2 − ∂z2 h = 0,


h +2 (8)
a

this equation describes the evolution of perturbations in the anisotropic spacetime which differs from the
isotropic case only by the minus sign of the last term (namely −∂z2 )[21, 22, 23]. Note that in equation (8),
h = h(τ, x) and prime is derivative respect to τ , and we need to Fourier transform to calculate the power
spectrum. For abbreviation, we denote the Fourier transform of h(τ, x) by h(τ, k), then by taking Fourier
transforms of both sides (8), one gets
′
!
a
h′ (τ, k) − kx2 + ky2 − kz2 h(τ, k) = 0.
′′


h (τ, k) + 2 (9)
a

The conventional method for solving this equation (see e. g. [21, 22]) is to first specify the scale factor (as
a function of time) for each cosmological period to find the corresponding solution and finally matching the
solutions at the epoch of the transition between the periods. Here, we will use the method of uniformity of
the equation instead, that is, we replace the time derivatives with the derivatives respect to the scale factor.
This is done through the familiar relation dt = adτ which allows perturbations to be expressed on scale fac-
tor rather than time, that is h(τ, x) → h(a, x) (or equivalently h(τ, k) → h(a, k)). But, before doing this, it
is convenient to use the following scales by definition of the standard quantities introduced in the following table:

Table 1: Standard Quantities

Quantity Value (On cosmological scales) Value (in c = 1 unity )
L0 100 Mpc 1
t0 13.787 Gyr 1
k0 0.05 Mpc 5 L−1
0
H0 100 hs−1 kmM pc−1 1.001 t−1
0

where k0 is the pivot scale and H0 is the Hubble constant. Now, by imposing the variable change and taking
into account the dimensionless transformations k → k/k0 and H → H/H0 , equation (9) takes the following
(uniform) form:
2
a4 dH 2
  
5
a4 H 2 haa (a, k) + 4a3 H 2 + ha (a, k) + kx2 + ky2 − kz2


h(a, k) = 0, (10)
2 da 1.001
2
where ha (a, k) = dh(a,k)
da , haa (a, k) = d h(a,k)
da2 and H = aȧ = h′ /aha . Now, by considering the Hubble parameter
as a function of scale factor, the equation (10) becomes uniform, meaning that it consists of only one dependent
variable (a) and one independent variable (h). It is not difficult to show that here the Hubble parameter has
the same form in the isotropic case, that is

H 2 (a) = H02 Ωr a−4 + Ωm a−3 + ΩΛ ,

(11)

where Ωr = 9.4 × 10−5 ≃ 10−4 , Ωm = 0.3, and ΩΛ = 0.7 are radiation, matter and dark energy density
parameters respectively.
In the following, we introduce the relevant quantities to calculate the power spectrum . The first is the spectral
amplitude ∆2h (τ, k) defined by
dk 2
Z
< hij (τ, x)hij (τ, x) >= ∆ (τ, k), (12)
k h
which can be written in the reverse form as
k3
∆2h (τ, k) = < |h(τ, k)|2 >, (13)
π2

3
or, in terms of scale factor
k3
∆2h (a, k) =< |h(a, k)|2 > . (14)
π2
This amplitude relates the spectral distribution of the amplified fluctuations and the cosmological kinematic
parameters. It is also useful to describe the distribution of the modes in outside the horizon.
The second quantity characterizes the intensity of a stochastic GW background (called spectral energy density)
and is given by
1 dρ
Ωh (a, k) = , (15)
ρc d ln k
where ρ and ρc are energy density and critical energy density, respectively. Since, the relic GW with mode
inside horizon should be still present today, they must be accessible to direct observations. The spectral
energy density characterises the spectrum of the relic waves and thus it is useful to discuss a possible their
direct detection. For the mode inside horizon, the spectral energy density is related to the spectral amplitude
through the relation
∆2h k 5 < |h(a, k)|2 >
Ωh (a, k) = k 2 2 2
= . (16)
12 a H (a) 12π 2 a2 H 2 (a)
The spectrum of waves at the present time τ0 is obtained by substituting the conventional value of scale factor
(a(τ0 ) = a0 = 1) into (16) which gives

k 5 < |h(1, k)|2 > k 5 |h(k)|2

Ω(k) = Ωh (1, k) = 2 = , (17)
12π 2 H0 3π 2 H02

where we have used |h(k)|2 = 12 h|h+ |2 i + h|h× |2 i = 41 hhij hij i = 14 < |h(1, k)|2 >.2

Let’s remember that discussion and investigation of the equation (16) depends on solving equation (10) which
in turn requires the appropriate initial conditions. The initial conditions is given by[23]


h 10−5 , k = 1 (18)
−5


ha 10 , k = 0.

We treat the equation (10) in the three √ following cases of the Hubble parameter (11):
1) Matter dominate, that is H(a) ≈ H0 Ωm a√−3 ,
2) Dark energy dominate, that is H(a) = H0 ΩΛ , √
3) Matter–Dark energy dominate, that is H(a) = √ H0 Ω m a + Ω Λ .
−3

It should be noted, the general case H(a) = H0 Ωr a−4 + Ωm a−3 + ΩΛ , hasn’t much different from the third
case, due to insignificant contribution of the radiation term (Ωr ≃ 10−4 ).
For the two first cases, equation (10) has exact solutions, but the third case does not. But, since to calculate the
power spectrum, the use of numerical methods is needed, we implement a numerical computation recipe for the
three cases. The results of computations3 are presented in the figures 1 and 2 with the following explanations:
1) Fig.1 shows the spectrum corresponding to the matter dominate case in the anisotropic mode (red graph).
To have a comparison, the blue graph (corresponding to the isotropic mode) is also illutrated[20]. The two
graph are almost identical in quality, but quantitative comparison shows in the lower frequencies, the two
spectrums are the same and in the higher frequency, the anisotropic mode indicates a more power. The latter
could mean that detection is more likely in the anisotropic mode.
2) Fig.2 (right panel) shows the spectrums corresponding to the dark energy (brown graph) and the matter–
dark energy (blue graph) dominate cases for the anisotropic mode. It is obvious that the matter contribution
increases the power and decreases the power fluctuations, significantly. For comparison, the spectrum diagrams
corresponding to the isotropic mode in the left panel are also illustrated. As can be seen, there is not much
difference between matter–dark energy dominate cases (blue and green graph) in two modes. For the dark
energy dominate case, except at very low frequencies, there is no power spectrum in isotropic mode (yellow
graph), instead in anisotropic mode, the power spectrum has a visible power on frequency range displayed.
This means that detecting high–frequency waves in an anisotropic Vacuum Energy Dominated Universe is
much more likely.
2
These relations mean that the contributions of the two polarization states (+, ×) of GW is taken to be equal[22].
3
In the computations, the wave vector is to be taken as kx = ky = kz = |√k3| = √k3 .

4

(k)
-3
10

10- 6

10- 9

k
10- 12 0.05 0.10 0.50 1 5 10

Figure 1: The power spectrum Ωh (k) in isotropic (blue) and anisotropic (red) modes for matter
dominate case.

(k) (k)
1
10

10- 5
10- 4

10- 10
10- 9
k
0.05 0.10 0.50 1 5 10
10- 15

10- 14 k
0.05 0.10 0.50 1 5 10
- 20
10

10- 19

10- 25

Figure 2: The power spectrum diagrams for anisotropic mode (right panel) corresponding to the two
cases of dark energy dominant (brown graph) and dark energy–matter dominant (blue graph). The
left panel shows the two mentioned cases in isotropic mode, that is dark energy dominant (yellow
graph) and dark energy–matter dominant (green graph).

In the end of this section, we point out that all spectrum diagrams illustrated so far, despite their fluctua-
tions in the frequency range displayed, have increasing character. In the next section, we will see, the spectrum
diagrams, in modified gravity frame, can have both increasing and decreasing characters.

3.2 Perturbations Modified Gravity f (R) = R2

In this section, we want to present the spectrum diagrams for tensorial perturbations of anisotropic
background in the modified gravity framework.4 To begin this, we substitute background metric (2)
and Ricci scalar (5) in equation (7) to obtain
′
∂τ (S h ) − ∂x (S ∂x h) − ∂y (S ∂y h) + ∂z (S ∂z h) = 0, (19)
′
where S = h 2 − (∂x h)2 − (∂y h)2 + (∂z h)2 . Equation (19) is the Modified Gravity counterpart of
equation (8) in Einstein’s gravity and as it turns out, it is a nonlinear equation. As we know, in
confrontation with differential equations, in the nonlinear case, the variety of solutions can be more
4
As far as the authors have evaluated the computational results, there is no solution in the modified gravity for
isotropic mode.

5
than the linear one. For example for equation (19), one can consider the following solutions:

cos(x + y − z − τ ) ± e−|x+y−z−τ | ,



−|τ −x−y−z|


cos(τ − x − y − z) ± e ,
h(τ, x) = A


 sin(τ − x − y − z) ± e−|τ −x−y−z| ,
cos(τ − x − y − z) ± sin(τ − x − y − z),


where A is a constant and we set it equal to unit to simplify. Remember that the variety allows one
to choose the solutions that are more in line with physical condition.
In order to compute the power spectrum, we choose the followings from the above solutions
h1 (τ, x) = cos(x + y − z − τ ) − e−|x+y−z−τ |

and

h2 (τ, x) = sin(τ − x − y − z) + e−|τ −x−y−z| ,

by the same numerical recipes in the last section, the spectral graphs corresponding to the solutions
are illustrated in Fig.3. The figure contains the following points:
1) Contrary to the Einstein’s gravity in which there were only increasing graphs, there is graph with
decreasing character.
2) The increasing graph has no fluctuations and prominently represents a scale-invariant character
predicted by the inflationary models.

(k)

100.000

0.001

k
0.5 1 5 10 50 100
10- 8

10- 13

10- 18

Figure 3: The graphs spectrums corresponding to the perturbations h1 (τ, x) (Purple) and h2 (τ, x)
(Black) in anisotropic universe.

4 Conclusions
The power spectrum corresponding to the primordial tensorial perturbations (leads to PGW) arisen
from anisotropic background metric are considered in the Einstein’s and modified gravities framewrks.
In the Einstein’s gravity, comparing the results with those of isotropic mode shows, there is no much
difference for matter dominate and matter–dark energy dominate cases. For dark energy dominate
case, there is almost no spectrum in the isotropic mode, however, the anisotropic mode shows a proper
spectrum.
In modified gravity frame, in addition to increasing spectral graphs, there can also be decreasing
ones. This can indicate the ability to adapt more to possible future data and observations. One of
the notable features in this frame for perturbations spectrum is the scale–invariant character predicted
by inflationary models.

6
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