Does Planck Actually "See" the Bunch-Davies State?

Abstract

To what extent can the Planck satellite observations be interpreted as confirmation of the quantum part of the inflationary paradigm? Has it "seen" the Bunch-Davies state? We compare and contrast the Bunch-Davies interpretation with one using a so-called entangled state in which the fluctuations of a spectator scalar field are entangled with those of the metric perturbations $\zeta$. We first show how a spectator scalar field $\Sigma$, with an expectation value $\sigma (t)$ that evolves in time, will generically generate such a state. We then use this state to compute the power spectrum $P_{\zeta }(k)$ and thence the temperature anisotropies $C_l$ in the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB). We find interesting differences from the standard calculations using the Bunch-Davies (BD) state. We argue that existing data may already be used to place interesting bounds on this class of deviations from the BD state and that, for some values of the parameters of the state, the power spectra may be consistent with the Planck satellite data.

arXiv comment32 pages, 12 figures. V2: Final version accepted for publication in JCAP. Changes: References added and minor clarifications to the presentation

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• Observations in Quantum Cosmology
• Entanglement masquerading in the CMB
• Entangled states as a probe of early universe history: a Higgs case study