Constraining Quantum Initial Conditions before Inflation
| Autor: | Will Handley, T. Gessey-Jones |
|---|---|
| Jazyk: | angličtina |
| Rok vydání: | 2021 |
| Předmět: |
Physics
Inflation (cosmology) Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics (astro-ph.CO) Cosmic microwave background FOS: Physical sciences Observable General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology (gr-qc) Function (mathematics) Astrophysics::Cosmology and Extragalactic Astrophysics General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology Theoretical physics symbols.namesake Singularity Vacuum energy symbols Planck Quantum Astrophysics - Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics |
| Popis: | We theoretically and observationally investigate different choices of initial conditions for the primordial mode function that are imposed during an epoch preceding inflation. By deriving predictions for the observables resulting from several alternate quantum vacuum prescriptions we show some choices of vacua are theoretically observationally distinguishable from others. Comparing these predictions to the Planck 2018 observations via a Bayesian analysis shows no significant evidence to favour any of the quantum vacuum prescriptions over the others. In addition we consider frozen initial conditions, representing a white-noise initial state at the big-bang singularity. Under certain assumptions the cosmological concordance model and frozen initial conditions are found to produce identical predictions for the cosmic microwave background anisotropies. Frozen initial conditions may thus provide an alternative theoretic paradigm to explain observations that were previously understood in terms of the inflation of a quantum vacuum. 16 pages, 13 figures, accepted for publication in PRD. Updated to respond to referee's comments |
| Databáze: | OpenAIRE |
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