English

Primordial power spectra from $k$-inflation with curvature

Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics 2022-06-28 v2 General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology

Abstract

We investigate the primordial power spectra for general kinetic inflation models that support a period of kinetic dominance in the case of curved universes. We present derivations of the Mukhanov-Sasaki equations with a nonstandard scalar kinetic Lagrangian which manifests itself through the inflationary sound speed cs2c_s^2. We extend the analytical approximations exploited in Contaldi et al [1] and Thavanesan et al [2] to general kinetic Lagrangians and show the effect of kk-inflation on the primordial power spectra for models with curvature. In particular, the interplay between sound speed and curvature results in a natural low wavenumber cutoff for the power spectra in the case of closed universes. Using the analytical approximation, we further show that a change in the inflationary sound speed between different epochs of inflation results in non-decaying oscillations in the resultant power spectra for the comoving curvature perturbation.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2112.07547,
  title  = {Primordial power spectra from $k$-inflation with curvature},
  author = {Zakhar Shumaylov and Will Handley},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2112.07547},
  year   = {2022}
}

Comments

12 pages, 5 figures; v1: As submitted to PRD. v2: As published in PRD