The MESS of the CMB
arXiv:2006.03395 · doi:10.1088/1475-7516/2021/02/033
Abstract
We analyze cosmic microwave background (CMB) data taking into account the effects of a momentum dependent effective sound speed (MESS). This approach allows to study the effects of primordial entropy in a model independent way, and its implementation requires a minimal modification of existing CMB fitting numerical codes developed for single scalar field models. We adopt a phenomenological approach, and study the effects a local variation of the MESS around the scale where other analysis have shown some deviation from an approximately scale invariant curvature perturbation spectrum. We obtain a substantial improvement of the fit with respect to a model without MESS, showing that primordial entropy modeled by MESS can be an explanation of these deviations.
15 pages, 5 figures