English

Superoscillatory initial states during inflation: theory, CMB constraints, and prospects for galaxy clustering

Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics 2026-06-23 v1 General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology

Abstract

We construct an explicit boundary-action realization of superoscillatory initial states (SIS) for inflation, in which quantum interference within a band-limited initial wavefunctional generates a spectrally localized Bogoliubov excitation with a rapidly winding phase. Starting from a quadratic boundary term on the initial time surface, we derive the Bogoliubov coefficients and the resulting primordial curvature spectrum, obtaining a localized oscillatory feature fixed by the superoscillatory parameters (a,N)(a,N) rather than imposed phenomenologically. We compute the projection of this feature onto CMB angular power spectra and show that transfer-function smearing strongly suppresses the oscillatory component; full CAMB calculations confirm the qualitative effect and show that a simple Gaussian approximation overestimates the peak signal by about a factor of three. Using Planck 2018 TT data, we obtain an indicative matched-filter bound λ0.05\lambda \lesssim 0.05 for a representative feature centered near the first acoustic peak, Δk/k=0.05\Delta k/k_* = 0.05 at k=1.45×102Mpc1k_* = 1.45\times 10^{-2}\,\mathrm{Mpc}^{-1}. We further derive correlated predictions for polarization and the bispectrum, identify structural constraints that distinguish SIS from generic excited-state models, and show that galaxy clustering provides a qualitatively more powerful probe because it preserves the full oscillatory structure that CMB projection suppresses. This framework provides a concrete and testable realization of how initial-state quantum interference can imprint itself on cosmological observables.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2606.25133,
  title  = {Superoscillatory initial states during inflation: theory, CMB constraints, and prospects for galaxy clustering},
  author = {Ali Nayeri},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2606.25133},
  year   = {2026}
}

Comments

Accepted for publication in Physical Review D. 17 pages, 8 figures