Science with the space-based interferometer LISA. IV: Probing inflation
  with gravitational waves
  We investigate the potential for the LISA space-based interferometer to
detect the stochastic gravitational wave background produced from different
mechanisms during inflation. Focusing on well-motivated scenarios, we study the
resulting contributions from particle production during inflation, inflationary
spectator fields with varying speed of sound, effective field theories of
inflation with specific patterns of symmetry breaking and models leading to the
formation of primordial black holes. The projected sensitivities of LISA are
used in a model-independent way for various detector designs and
configurations. We demonstrate that LISA is able to probe these well-motivated
inflationary scenarios beyond the irreducible vacuum tensor modes expected from
any inflationary background.
