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Phys. Rev. D 62, 101501(R) (2000) [5 pages]

Cosmological electromagnetic fields due to gravitational wave perturbations

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Mattias Marklund*
National Defence Research Establishment FOA, SE-172 90 Stockholm, Sweden;
Department of Mathematics and Applied Mathematics, University of Cape Town, Rondebosch 7701, Cape Town, South Africa;
Department of Electromagnetics, Chalmers University of Technology, SE-412 96 Gothenburg, Sweden

Peter K. S. Dunsby†
Department of Mathematics and Applied Mathematics, University of Cape Town, Rondebosch 7701, Cape Town, South Africa

Gert Brodin‡
Department of Plasma Physics, Umeå University, SE-901 87 Umeå, Sweden

Received 18 July 2000; published 9 October 2000

We consider the dynamics of electromagnetic fields in an almost-Friedmann-Robertson-Walker universe using the covariant and gauge-invariant approach of Ellis and Bruni. Focusing on the situation where deviations from the background model are generated by tensor perturbations only, we demonstrate that the coupling between gravitational waves and a weak magnetic test field can generate electromagnetic waves. We show that this coupling leads to an initial pulse of electromagnetic waves whose width and amplitude are determined by the wavelengths of the magnetic field and gravitational waves. A number of implications for cosmology are discussed; in particular we calculate an upper bound of the magnitude of this effect using limits on the quadrupole anisotropy of the cosmic microwave background.

© 2000 The American Physical Society

URL:
http://link.aps.org/doi/10.1103/PhysRevD.62.101501
DOI:
10.1103/PhysRevD.62.101501
PACS:
04.30.Nk, 95.30.Sf, 98.80.Cq

*Email address: mattias.marklund@sto.foa.se

†Email address: peter@vishnu.mth.uct.ac.za

‡Email address: gert.brodin@physics.umu.se

 
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