English

Does Planck Actually "See" the Bunch-Davies State?

High Energy Physics - Theory 2021-08-06 v2 Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology

Abstract

To what extent can the Planck satellite observations be interpreted as confirmation of the quantum part of the inflationary paradigm? Has it "seen" the Bunch-Davies state? We compare and contrast the Bunch-Davies interpretation with one using a so-called entangled state in which the fluctuations of a spectator scalar field are entangled with those of the metric perturbations ζ\zeta. We first show how a spectator scalar field Σ\Sigma, with an expectation value σ(t)\sigma(t) that evolves in time, will generically generate such a state. We then use this state to compute the power spectrum Pζ(k)P_{\zeta}(k) and thence the temperature anisotropies ClC_l in the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB). We find interesting differences from the standard calculations using the Bunch-Davies (BD) state. We argue that existing data may already be used to place interesting bounds on this class of deviations from the BD state and that, for some values of the parameters of the state, the power spectra may be consistent with the Planck satellite data.

Cite

@article{arxiv.2104.13410,
  title  = {Does Planck Actually "See" the Bunch-Davies State?},
  author = {Rose Baunach and Nadia Bolis and R. Holman and Stacie Moltner and Benoit J. Richard},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2104.13410},
  year   = {2021}
}

Comments

32 pages, 12 figures. V2: Final version accepted for publication in JCAP. Changes: References added and minor clarifications to the presentation

R2 v1 2026-06-24T01:34:37.244Z