English

The running of featureful primordial power spectra

Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics 2020-12-10 v2

Abstract

Current measurements of the temperature and polarization anisotropy power spectra of the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) seem to indicate that the naive expectation for the slow-roll hierarchy within the most simple inflationary paradigm may not be respected in nature. We show that a primordial power spectra with localized features could in principle give rise to the observed slow-roll anarchy when fitted to a featureless power spectrum. Future CMB missions have the key to disentangle among the two possible paradigms and firmly establish the slow-roll mechanism as the responsible one for the inflationary period in the early universe. From a model comparison perspective, and assuming that nature has chosen a featureless primordial power spectrum, we find that, while with mock Planck data there is only weak evidence against a model with localized features, upcoming CMB measurements may provide strong evidence against such a non-standard primordial power spectrum.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1701.08977,
  title  = {The running of featureful primordial power spectra},
  author = {Stefano Gariazzo and Olga Mena and Victor Miralles and Héctor Ramírez and Lotfi Boubekeur},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1701.08977},
  year   = {2020}
}

Comments

8 pages, 2 figures; Late resubmission to match published version