• Accepted Paper

Detecting cosmological stasis with future gravitational wave observatories

Gabriela Barenboim and Anne-Katherine Burns

Phys. Rev. D - Accepted 27 October, 2026

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/c5l9-q1vk

Abstract

We map the observational predictions of cosmological stasis in the inflationary gravitational wave background (IGWB) onto the sensitivity bands of current and planned gravitational wave detectors. Using the closed-form piecewise spectral template derived in the companion paper~, we generate detectability maps for four stasis scenarios — canonical (0≤ws<1/3), stiff (1/3<ws<1), vacuum-energy/matter (−1/3<ws<0), and vacuum-energy/radiation (−1/3<ws<1/3) — across the frequency bands probed by NANOGrav, SKA, LISA, DECIGO, BBO, the Einstein Telescope, and Cosmic Explorer. For scenarios in which the spectrum is suppressed, ws<1/3, the stasis feature is detectable by BBO in the region of (ws,ΔN) parameter space in which ws≳0.2 for tensor-to-scalar ratios close to the Planck upper limit, r = 0.036, while to be detectable by DECIGO requires ws≳0.3. For scenarios in which the spectrum is enhanced, ws>1/3, the stasis feature is detectable by BBO across the entire (ws,ΔN) parameter space for tensor-to-scalar ratios of O(0.01). For large values of ws close to the kination limit, the feature is detectable for r as small as 10−9. We characterize the Standard-Model (SM) g* fine structure of the IGWB, showing that SM phase transitions introduce spectral steps of ≈20% (electroweak, at ∼2.6×10−6~Hz) and ≈53% (QCD, at ∼3.6×10−9~Hz). For stasis scenarios with end-of-stasis temperatures below the QCD scale these steps fall inside the stasis band and constitute additional spectral features that complement the primary signature. Finally, we model the finite-width end-of-stasis transition phenomenologically, demonstrating that the spectral break at $\fend$ is smoothed over a log-frequency window ΔNtrans×3(1+ws)/4, and that the consistency relation $\Ccal^2=\Ccal^2(\alpha)$ remains testable provided ΔNstasis≫ΔNtrans, a condition easily satisfied for all scenarios of phenomenological interest.

Export citation

Export citation

Choose format for download:

Download Citation

If the author has provided any supplemental materials with this article they will be available upon publication of the version of record.

Sign In to Your Journals Account

Filter

Filter

Article Lookup

Enter a citation