Improved calculation of relic gravitational waves

In this paper, we have improved the calculation of the relic gravitational waves (RGW) in two aspects. First, we investigate the transfer function by taking into consideration the redshift-suppression effect, the accelerating expansion effect, the damping effect of free-streaming relativistic particles, and the damping effect of cosmic phase transition, and give a simple approximate analytic expression, which clearly illustrates the dependence on the cosmological parameters. Second, we develop a numerical method to calculate the primordial power spectrum of RGW in a very wide frequency range, where the observed constraints on $n_{\rm s}$ (the scalar spectral index) and $P_{\rm S}(k_0)$ (the amplitude of primordial scalar spectrum) and the Hamilton--Jacobi equation are used. This method is applied to two kinds of inflationary models, which satisfy the current constraints on $n_{\rm s}$, $\alpha$ (the running of $n_{\rm s}$) and $r$ (the tensor--scalar ratio). We plot them in the $r-{\it\Omega}_{\rm g}$ diagram, where ${\it\Omega}_{\rm g}$ is the strength of RGW, and study their measurements from the cosmic microwave background (CMB) experiments and laser interferometers.