Particle production from inhomogeneities: the off-shell side of gravitational waves

A bstract We continue the study of particle production from gravitational inhomogeneities in the early Universe. Focusing on sources active on sub-horizon scales, we derive general expressions relating particle production to the unequal-time two-point function of the stress-energy tensor sourcing scalar, vector and tensor metric perturbations. The resulting particle yield probes the time-like support of this correlator, and in the tensor case the same object controls gravitational-wave emission when evaluated on the light-like support. This establishes a phenomenological link between dark matter production and gravitational wave signals, allowing the dark matter mass to be related to the amplitude of the stochastic gravitational wave background. Our results show that, on sub-horizon scales, particle production from inhomogeneous metric backgrounds practically reduces to gravitational scattering. This directly connects the formalism to gravitational freeze-in from the Standard Model thermal bath, while extending it to non-thermal and out-of-equilibrium sources. We apply the formalism to first-order phase transitions and discuss the associated production from scalar and tensor perturbations. The mechanism can efficiently populate gravitationally coupled dark sectors, especially when the perturbations are generated shortly after inflation.