Just enough inflation: power spectrum modifications at large scales Academic Article uri icon

abstract

  • We show that models of just enough' inflation, where the slow-roll evolution lasted only 50{60 e-foldings, feature modifications of the CMB power spectrum at large angular scales. We perform a systematic analytic analysis in the limit of a sudden transition between any possible non-slow-roll background evolution and the final stage of slow-roll inflation. We find a high degree of universality since most common backgrounds like fast-roll evolution, matter or radiation-dominance give rise to a power loss at large angular scales and a peak together with an oscillatory behaviour at scales around the value of the Hubble parameter at the beginning of slow-roll inati inflation on. Depending on the value of the equation of state parameter, different pre-inflationary epochs lead instead to an enhancement of power at low-l, and so seem disfavoured by recent observational hints for a lack of CMB power at l40. We also comment on the importance of initial conditions and the possibility to have multiple pre-inflationary stages.

published proceedings

  • JOURNAL OF COSMOLOGY AND ASTROPARTICLE PHYSICS

altmetric score

  • 7.548

author list (cited authors)

  • Cicoli, M., Downes, S., Dutta, B., Pedro, F. G., & Westphal, A.

citation count

  • 56

complete list of authors

  • Cicoli, Michele||Downes, Sean||Dutta, Bhaskar||Pedro, Francisco G||Westphal, Alexander

publication date

  • December 2014