Detecting nonclassical primordial gravitational waves with Hanbury-Brown-Twiss interferometry

Abstract

We consider the possible detection of nonclassicality of primordial gravitational waves (PGWs) by applying Hanbury-Brown-Twiss (HBT) interferometry to cosmology. We characterize the nonclassicality of PGWs in terms of sub-Poissonian statistics that can be measured by the HBT interferometry. We show that the presence of classical sources during inflation makes it possible to detect nonclassical PGWs with the HBT interferometry. We present two examples that realize the classical sources during inflation. It turns out that PGWs with frequencies higher than 10 kHz enable us to detect their nonclassicality.