Cosmic Microwave Background Tests of Inflation

Abstract

Inflation provides a unified paradigm for understanding the isotropy of the cosmic microwave background (CMB), the flatness problem, and the origin of large-scale structure. Although the physics responsible for inflation is not yet well understood, slow-roll inflation generically makes several predictions: a flat Universe, primordial adiabatic density perturbations, and a stochastic gravity-wave background. Inflation further predicts specific relations between the amplitudes and shapes of the spectrum of density perturbations and gravity waves. There are now excellent prospects for testing precisely these predictions with forthcoming CMB temperature and polarization maps. Here I discuss these new CMB tests of inflation.

8 pages. To appear in proc. of "Topics in Astroparticle and Underground Physics '97," Gran Sasso, Italy, September 7-11, 1997, eds. A. Bottino, A. di Credico, and P. Monacelli (North-Holland, Amsterdam) [Nucl. Phys. B (Proc. Suppl.)]. Abbreviated version to appear in proc. "Birth of the Universe II,", Rome, Italy, May 19-24, 1997, ed. F. Occhionero (Kluwer Academic, Dordrecht). Revised version (3/16/98) has corrected Figures

References in corpus (8)

• Signature of Gravity Waves in Polarization of the Microwave Background
• A Probe of Primordial Gravity Waves and Vorticity
• Reconstructing the Inflaton Potential --- an Overview
• Cosmological-Parameter Determination with Microwave Background Maps
• Signatures of Stellar Reionization of the Universe
• Power Spectra in Global Defect Theories of Cosmic Structure Formation
• Weighing the Universe with the Cosmic Microwave Background
• A New Test of Inflation