Inflationary power asymmetry from primordial domain walls
- Department of Physics, Sharif University of Technology, P.O. Box 11155-9161, Tehran (Iran, Islamic Republic of)
- Institute of Theoretical Astrophysics, University of Oslo, P.O. Box 1029 Blindern, N-0315 Oslo (Norway)
- School of Astronomy, Institute for Research in Fundamental Sciences (IPM), P.O. Box 19395-5531, Tehran (Iran, Islamic Republic of)
- DAMTP, Centre for Mathematical Sciences, University of Cambridge, Wilberforce Rd., Cambridge CB3 0WA (United Kingdom)
We study the asymmetric primordial fluctuations in a model of inflation in which translational invariance is broken by a domain wall. We calculate the corrections to the power spectrum of curvature perturbations; they are anisotropic and contain dipole, quadrupole, and higher multipoles with non-trivial scale-dependent amplitudes. Inspired by observations of these multipole asymmetries in terms of two-point correlations and variance in real space, we demonstrate that this model can explain the observed anomalous power asymmetry of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) sky, including its characteristic feature that the dipole dominates over higher multipoles. We test the viability of the model and place approximate constraints on its parameters by using observational values of dipole, quadrupole, and octopole amplitudes of the asymmetry measured by a local-variance estimator. We find that a configuration of the model in which the CMB sphere does not intersect the domain wall during inflation provides a good fit to the data. We further derive analytic expressions for the corrections to the CMB temperature covariance matrix, or angular power spectra, which can be used in future statistical analysis of the model in spherical harmonic space.
- OSTI ID:
- 22375725
- Journal Information:
- Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics, Vol. 2014, Issue 11; Other Information: Country of input: International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA); ISSN 1475-7516
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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