English

Constraints on the Tensor-to-Scalar ratio for non-power-law models

Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics 2015-06-15 v2 General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology

Abstract

Recent cosmological observations hint at a deviation from the simple power-law form of the primordial spectrum of curvature perturbations. In this paper we show that in the presence of a tensor component, a turn-over in the initial spectrum is preferred by current observations, and hence non-power-law models ought to be considered. For instance, for a power-law parameterisation with both a tensor component and running parameter, current data show a preference for a negative running at more than 2.5σ2.5\sigma C.L. As a consequence of this deviation from a power-law, constraints on the tensor-to-scalar ratio rr are slightly broader. We also present constraints on the inflationary parameters for a model-independent reconstruction and the Lasenby & Doran (LD) model. In particular, the constraints on the tensor-to-scalar ratio from the LD model are: rLD=0.11±0.024r_{\rm LD}=0.11\pm{0.024}. In addition to current data, we show expected constraints from Planck-like and CMB-Pol sensitivity experiments by using Markov-Chain-Monte-Carlo sampling chains. For all the models, we have included the Bayesian Evidence to perform a model selection analysis. The Bayes factor, using current observations, shows a strong preference for the LD model over the standard power-law parameterisation, and provides an insight into the accuracy of differentiating models through future surveys.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1303.4014,
  title  = {Constraints on the Tensor-to-Scalar ratio for non-power-law models},
  author = {J. Alberto Vazquez and M. Bridges and Yin-Zhe Ma and M. P. Hobson},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1303.4014},
  year   = {2015}
}

Comments

Minor changes to match version accepted by JCAP