Revisiting a pre-inflationary radiation era and its effect on the CMB power spectrum
- Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur 208016 (India)
- Theoretical Physics Division, Physical Research Laboratory, Navrangpura, Ahmedabad 380009 (India)
- Inter-University Centre for Astronomy and Astrophysics, Post Bag 4, Ganeshkhind, Pune 411007 (India)
We revisit the scenario where inflation is preceded by a radiation era by considering that the inflaton too could have been in thermal equilibrium early in the radiation era. Hence we take into account not only the effect of a pre-inflationary era on the inflaton mode functions but also that of a frozen thermal distribution of inflaton quanta. We initially discuss in detail the issues relevant to our scenario of a pre-inflationary radiation dominated era and then obtain the scalar power spectrum for this scenario. We find that the power spectrum is free from infrared divergences. We then use the WMAP and Planck data to determine the constraints on the inflaton comoving 'temperature' and on the duration of inflation. We find that the best fit value of the duration of inflation is less than 1 e-folding more than what is required to solve cosmological problems, while only an upper bound on the inflaton temperature can be obtained.
- OSTI ID:
- 22525791
- Journal Information:
- Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics, Vol. 2015, Issue 06; Other Information: Country of input: International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA); ISSN 1475-7516
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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