English

The Noisy Universe

Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics 2025-11-21 v1 General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology High Energy Physics - Phenomenology

Abstract

We present observational constraints on large-scale white noise (LSWN) in the cosmic density field, a phenomenon predicted to arise from non-linear mode coupling during cosmological evolution. Building on the theoretical framework of Paper I, where we demonstrated that non-linearities inevitably redistribute power from small to large scales through mode mixing, we confront these predictions with current cosmological data. We modify the CLASS Boltzmann code to incorporate a white noise component kBH/kk_\mathrm{BH}/k in the primordial power spectrum and perform parameter estimation using current cosmological data. The non-detection of excess power on the largest observable scales places stringent upper bounds: kBH1.80×1013 Mpc1k_\mathrm{BH} \leq 1.80 \times 10^{-13}~\mathrm{Mpc}^{-1} at 99\% confidence. These constraints imply the primordial power spectrum must deviate from perfect scale invariance on small scales, either through a cutoff at kcut3 pc1k_{\mathrm{cut}} \lesssim 3~\mathrm{pc}^{-1} or through running of the spectral index with αs0.015\alpha_s \lesssim -0.015. Our results demonstrate that LSWN provides a powerful probe of the primordial spectrum at scales orders of magnitude smaller than directly observable, offering unique constraints on early-universe physics.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2511.15803,
  title  = {The Noisy Universe},
  author = {Gabriela Barenboim and Aurora Ireland and Albert Stebbins},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2511.15803},
  year   = {2025}
}

Comments

10 pages, 1 figure

R2 v1 2026-07-01T07:46:03.861Z