Observational constraints on anisotropies for bouncing alternatives to inflation

Abstract

We calculate how primordial anisotropies in the background space-time affect the evolution of cosmological perturbations for bouncing alternatives to inflation, like ekpyrosis and the matter bounce scenario. We find that the leading order effect of anisotropies in the contracting phase of the universe is to induce anisotropies in the cosmic microwave background with a very concrete form: a scale-invariant quadrupolar angular distribution. Sub-leading effects are the generation of higher-order moments in the angular distribution, as well as cross-correlations between scalar and tensor modes. We also find that observational constraints from the cosmic microwave background on the quadrupole moment provide strong bounds on allowed anisotropies for bouncing alternatives to inflation that are significantly more constraining than the bounds previously obtained using scaling arguments based on the conjectured Belinski-Khalatnikov-Lifshitz instability.

32 pages, 16 figures. v2: Clarifications and references added, v3: Clarifications and references added

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Cited by in corpus (5)

• Negative scalar potentials and the swampland: an Anti-Trans-Planckian Censorship Conjecture
• Loop quantum cosmology: relation between theory and observations
• States of low energy in the Schwinger effect
• Quantum geometric formulation of Brans-Dicke theory for Bianchi I spacetime
• Ekpyrosis in Quantum Gravitational Anisotropic Bouncing Models