A Cosmological Window on Trans-Planckian Physics

Abstract

In the framework of inflation, scales which nowadays correspond to large scale structures were smaller than the Planck length at the beginning of inflation. Therefore, measurements of CMBR anisotropy or surveys of galaxies and of clusters of galaxies could help us to probe physics beyond the Planck scale. In these proceedings, we study how the inflationary observables depend on trans-Planckian physics. It is found that there exist cases where adiabaticity can be violated and the primordial spectrum of the quantum cosmological perturbations modified. These cases correspond to rather drastic alterations of the dispersion relation. There exist also modifications of the standard physics which leave the power spectrum unchanged and therefore which are compatible with the data. In this sense, the presently available observations already constrain trans-Planckian physics.

5 pages, 2 figures. One important correction in the Corley/Jacobson case with b_m>0 and some misprints corrected

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• A note on inflation and transplanckian physics
• Trans-Planckian Effects in Inflationary Cosmology and the Modified Uncertainty Principle
• On the consistency of de Sitter vacua
• Effective Field Theories and Inflation
• Decoupling in an expanding universe: backreaction barely constrains short distance effects in the CMB
• Bounds on Generic High-Energy Physics Modifications to the Primordial Power Spectrum from Back-Reaction on the Metric
• Extracting New Physics from the CMB
• Naturalness in Cosmological Initial Conditions
• Decoupling, Trans-Planckia and Inflation
• Short Distance Physics and Initial State Effects on the CMB Power Spectrum
• Trans-Planckian Philosophy of Cosmology
• A worldsheet perspective on string inflation