Measuring the effects of Loop Quantum Cosmology in the CMB data

In this Essay we investigate the observational signatures of Loop Quantum Cosmology (LQC) in the CMB data. First, we concentrate on the dynamics of LQC and we provide the basic cosmological functions. We then obtain the power spectrum of scalar and tensor perturbations in order to study the performance of LQC against the latest CMB data. We find that LQC provides a robust prediction for the main slow-roll parameters, like the scalar spectral index and the tensor-to-scalar fluctuation ratio, which are in excellent agreement within $1sigma$ with the values recently measured by the Planck collaboration. This result indicates that LQC can be seen as an alternative scenario with respect to that of standard inflation.