Sensitivity of inflationary predictions to pre-inflationary phases

Journal Article · Fri Jan 15 04:00:00 EST 2016 · Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1088/1475-7516/2016/01/027· OSTI ID:22458426

Bahrami, Sina; Flanagan, Éanna É. ^[1]

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1. Department of Physics, Cornell University,Ithaca, NY 14853 (United States)

How sensitive are the predictions of inflation to pre-inflationary conditions when the number of efolds of inflation is not too large? In an attempt to address this question, we consider a simple model where the inflationary era is preceded by an era dominated by a radiation fluid, which is coupled to the inflaton only gravitationally and which extends back to the Planck era. We show that there is a natural generalized Bunch-Davies vacuum state for perturbations to the coupled inflaton-gravity-fluid system at early times. With this choice of initial state the model predicts interesting deviations from the standard power spectrum of single field slow-roll inflation at large scales. However, the deviations are too small to be observable in near future CMB observations.

• Sponsoring Organization: SCOAP3, CERN, Geneva (Switzerland)
• OSTI ID: 22458426
• Journal Information: Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics, Journal Name: Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics Journal Issue: 01 Vol. 2016; ISSN 1475-7516
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS
COSMOLOGICAL INFLATION
DISTURBANCES
GRAVITATION
QUANTUM COSMOLOGY
RELICT RADIATION
SENSITIVITY
VACUUM STATES