CMB anomalies and the effects of local features of the inflaton potential

Abstract

Recent analysis of the WMAP and Planck data have shown the presence of a dip and a bump in the spectrum of primordial perturbations at the scales $k=0.002$ Mpc${}^{-1}$ and $k=0.0035$ Mpc${}^{-1}$ respectively. We analyze for the first time the effects a local feature in the inflaton potential to explain the observed deviations from scale invariance in the primordial spectrum. We perform a best fit analysis of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) radiation temperature and polarization data. The effects of the features can improve the agreement with observational data respect to the featureless model. The best fit local feature affects the primordial curvature spectrum mainly in the region of the bump, leaving the spectrum unaffected on other scales.

18 pages, 8figures, published in EPJC

References in corpus (5)

• CMB polarization features from inflation versus reionization
• New Universal Local Feature in the Inflationary Perturbation Spectrum
• New Constraints on Oscillations in the Primordial Spectrum of Inflationary Perturbations
• Whipped inflation
• Reconstruction of the primordial fluctuation spectrum from the five-year WMAP data by the cosmic inversion method with band-power decorrelation analysis

Cited by in corpus (12)

• Features of the inflaton potential and the power spectrum of cosmological perturbations
• Spectrum oscillations from features in the potential of single-field inflation
• Constraints on inflation with LSS surveys: features in the primordial power spectrum
• Robust predictions for an oscillatory bispectrum in Planck 2015 data from transient reductions in the speed of sound of the inflaton
• Scale invariance of the primordial tensor power spectrum
• One spectrum to rule them all?
• Spectral Distortion Signatures of Step-like Inflationary Potential
• Degeneracy in the spectrum and bispectrum among featured inflaton potentials
• Inflation from a chaotic potential with a step
• The running of featureful primordial power spectra
• Investigating the Constraints on Primordial Features with Future Cosmic Microwave Background and Galaxy Surveys
• Cross-tests of CMB features in the primordial spectra