Gravitational waves from mini-creation events

Abstract

This paper examines the possibility of testing the hypothesis recently proposed by some authors that, instead of the one-shot creation of the entire Universe in a big bang, creation of matter takes place in finite bursts at random in a Universe that is without a beginning and whose expansion on the large scale is as given by the steady-state model. It is argued that if the creation events are anisotropic then they generate gravitational waves. Calculations are given to show that a laser interferometric detector of the LIGO type would easily detect an event that generates ~100-1000 M_sun. Further, the cosmological gravitational wave background generated by the mini-creation events is compared with the limits set by the analysis of the arrival time of pulses from millisecond pulsars. The existing data place severe constraints on the mass and anisotropies of the mini-creation events.