Testing Inflation and Curvaton Scenarios with CMB Distortions

Abstract

Prior to recombination, Silk damping causes the dissipation of energy from acoustic waves into the monopole of the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB), resulting in spectral distortions. These can be used to probe the primordial scalar power spectrum on smaller scales than it is possible with CMB anisotropies. An enhancement of power on these scales is nevertheless required for the resulting distortions to be detectable by future experiments like PIXIE. In this paper, we examine all 49 single-field inflation models listed by Martin et al. in the Encyclopaedia Inflationaris [1] and find that only one of these may lead to a detectable level of distortions in a tuned region of its parameter space, namely the original hybrid model. Three effective multi-field scenarios are also studied: with softly and suddenly turning trajectories, and with a mild waterfall trajectory. Softly turning trajectories do not induce distortions at any detectable level, whereas a sudden turn in the field space or a mild waterfall trajectory predicts a peak (plus damped oscillations in the sudden turn case) in the scalar power spectrum, which can lead to an observable amount of CMB distortions. Finally, another scenario leading to potentially detectable distortions involves a curvaton whose blue spectrum is subdominant on CMB angular scales and overtakes the inflaton spectrum on smaller scales. In this case however, we show that the bounds from ultra compact minihaloes are not satisfied. Expectations for an ultimate PRISM-class experiment characterized by an improvement in sensitivity by a factor of ten are discussed for some models.

36 pages, 32 figures, minor changes

References in corpus (17)

• BICEP2 I: Detection Of B-mode Polarization at Degree Angular Scales
• The Effective Field Theory of Inflation
• Gauge invariant MSSM inflaton
• Generalised constraints on the curvature perturbation from primordial black holes
• Mass hierarchies and non-decoupling in multi-scalar field dynamics
• A joint analysis of Planck and BICEP2 B modes including dust polarization uncertainty
• Heavy fields, reduced speeds of sound and decoupling during inflation
• Curvature Perturbation Spectrum in Two-field Inflation with a Turning Trajectory
• Beyond y and μ: the shape of the CMB spectral distortions in the intermediate epoch, 1.5x10^4 < z < 2x10^5
• Hybrid inflation along waterfall trajectories
• Non-gaussianity and cosmic uncertainty in curvaton-type models
• Mixing of blackbodies: entropy production and dissipation of sound waves in the early Universe
• Anatomy of F_D-Term Hybrid Inflation
• Background reionization history from omniscopes
• Cosmology from the Highly-Redshifted 21 cm Line
• Radiative Lifting of Flat Directions of the MSSM in de Sitter Background
• D-term inflation after spontaneous symmetry breaking

Cited by in corpus (27)

• Beyond $\Lambda$CDM: Problems, solutions, and the road ahead
• Massive Primordial Black Holes from Hybrid Inflation as Dark Matter and the seeds of Galaxies
• Features and New Physical Scales in Primordial Observables: Theory and Observation
• Which spectral distortions does $\Lambda$CDM actually predict?
• $\mu$-Distortions or Running: A Guaranteed Discovery from CMB Spectrometry
• Running the running
• Spectral distortions from the dissipation of tensor perturbations
• ALMA Spectroscopic Survey in the Hubble Ultra Deep Field: implications for spectral line intensity mapping at millimeter wavelengths and CMB spectral distortions
• Spectral distortions of the CMB dipole
• Correlating CMB Spectral Distortions with Temperature: what do we learn on Inflation?
• Cosmological constraints from $\mu E$ cross-correlations
• Quest for CMB spectral distortions to probe the scalar-induced gravitational wave background interpretation of pulsar timing array data
• Combined features in the primordial spectra induced by a sudden turn in two-field DBI inflation
• The effects of the small-scale behaviour of dark matter power spectrum on CMB spectral distortion
• Curvaton reheating in a Scale Invariant Two Measures Theory
• Anisotropic CMB distortions from non-Gaussian isocurvature perturbations
• CMB Spectral Distortion Constraints on Thermal Inflation
• CMB spectral distortions as solutions to the Boltzmann equations
• New Horizons in Cosmology with Spectral Distortions of the Cosmic Microwave Background
• CMB spectral distortions in generic two-field models
• Probing small-scale non-Gaussianity from anisotropies in acoustic reheating
• Resolving primordial physics through correlated signatures
• Testing kinetically coupled inflation models with CMB distortions
• Impact of the primordial fluctuation power spectrum on the reionization history
• Spectral Distortion Signatures of Step-like Inflationary Potential
• An introduction to inflation after Planck: from theory to observations
• SPECTER: An Instrument Concept for CMB Spectral Distortion Measurements with Enhanced Sensitivity