English

CMB Cold Spot from Inflationary Feature Scattering

Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics 2016-06-02 v2 High Energy Physics - Theory

Abstract

We propose a "feature-scattering" mechanism to explain the cosmic microwave background cold spot seen from WMAP and Planck maps. If there are hidden features in the potential of multi-field inflation, the inflationary trajectory can be scattered by such features. The scattering is controlled by the amount of isocurvature fluctuations, and thus can be considered as a mechanism to convert isocurvature fluctuations into curvature fluctuations. This mechanism predicts localized cold spots (instead of hot ones) on the CMB. In addition, it may also bridge a connection between the cold spot and a dip on the CMB power spectrum at 20\ell \sim 20.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1501.00282,
  title  = {CMB Cold Spot from Inflationary Feature Scattering},
  author = {Yi Wang and Yin-Zhe Ma},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1501.00282},
  year   = {2016}
}

Comments

17 pages, 17 figures, Nuclear Physics B in press

R2 v1 2026-06-22T07:48:42.338Z