Can power spectrum observations rule out slow-roll inflation?
Abstract
The spectral index of scalar perturbations is an important observable that allows us to learn about inflationary physics. In particular, a detection of a significant deviation from a constant spectral index could enable us to rule out the simplest class of inflation models. We investigate whether future observations could rule out canonical single-field slow-roll inflation given the parameters allowed by current observational constraints. We find that future measurements of a constant running (or running of the running) of the spectral index over currently available scales are unlikely to achieve this. However, there remains a large region of parameter space (especially when considering the running of the running) for falsifying the assumed class of slow-roll models if future observations accurately constrain a much wider range of scales.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.1710.08408,
title = {Can power spectrum observations rule out slow-roll inflation?},
author = {J. P. P. Vieira and Christian T. Byrnes and Antony Lewis},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1710.08408},
year = {2019}
}