Isotropic background and anisotropies of gravitational waves induced by cosmological soliton isocurvature perturbations

Abstract: Cosmological solitons are widely predicted by scenarios of the early Universe. In this work, we investigate the isotropic background and anisotropies of gravitational waves (GWs) induced by soliton isocurvature perturbations, especially considering the effects of non-Gaussianity in these perturbations. Regardless of non-Gaussianity, the energy-density fraction spectrum of isocurvature-induced GWs approximately has a universal shape within the perturbative regime, thus serving as a distinctive signal of solitons. We derive the angular power spectrum of isocurvature-induced GWs to characterize their anisotropies. Non-Gaussianity plays a key role in generating anisotropies through the couplings between large- and small-scale isocurvature perturbations, making the angular power spectrum to be a powerful probe of non-Gaussianity. Moreover, the isocurvature-induced GWs have nearly no cross-correlations with the cosmic microwave background, providing a new observable to distinguish them from other GW sources, e.g., GWs induced by cosmological curvature perturbations enhanced at small scales. Therefore, detection of both the isotropic background and anisotropies of isocurvature-induced GWs could reveal important implications for the solitons as well as the early Universe.