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Register a new userScratches from the Past: Inflationary Archaeology through Features in the Power Spectrum of Primordial Fluctuations
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Inflation may provide unique insight into the physics at the highest available energy scales that cannot be replicated in any realistic terrestrial experiment. Features in the primordial power spectrum are generically predicted in a wide class of models of inflation and its alternatives, and are observationally one of the most overlooked channels for finding evidence for non-minimal inflationary models. Constraints from observations of the cosmic microwave background cover the widest range of feature frequencies, but the most sensitive constraints will come from future large-scale structure surveys that can measure the largest number of linear and quasi-linear modes.
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The first year of observations by the Planck satellite mission shows that the cosmic microwave background (CMB) fluctuations are consistent with gaussian statistics in the primordial perturbations, a key prediction of the simplest models of inflation. However, there are hints of anomalies in the CMB power spectrum and bispectrum. We check for the possibility that some of these anomalous features have a common physical origin in a transient reduction of the inflaton speed of sound. We do this by exploiting predicted correlations between the power spectrum and bispectrum. Our results suggest that current data might already be sensitive enough to detect transient reductions in the speed of sound as mild as a few percent. Since this is a signature of interactions, it opens a new window for the detection of extra degrees of freedom during inflation.
In a Quantum Field Theory with a time-dependent background, time-translational symmetry is broken. We therefore expect time-dependent loop corrections to cosmological observables after renormalization for an interacting field, with the consequent physical implications. In this paper we compute and discuss such radiative corrections to the primordial spectrum within simple models, both for massless and massive virtual fields, and we disentangle the time-dependence caused by the background and by the initial state after renormalization. For the investigated models the departure from near-scale-invariance is very small and there is full compatibility with the current Planck data constraints. Future CMB measurements may improve the current constraints on feature-full primordial spectra and possibly observe these effects in the most optimistic scenario of hybrid inflation, revealing the interacting nature of the inflaton field.
Sharp features in the primordial power spectrum are a powerful window into the inflationary epoch. To date, the cosmic microwave background (CMB) has offered the most sensitive avenue to search for these signatures. In this paper, we demonstrate the power of large-scale structure observations to surpass the CMB as a probe of primordial features. We show that the signatures in galaxy surveys can be separated from the broadband power spectrum and are as robust to the nonlinear evolution of matter as the standard baryon acoustic oscillations. As a result, analyses can exploit a significant range of scales beyond the linear regime available in the datasets. We develop a feature search for large-scale structure, apply it to the final data release of the Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey and find new bounds on oscillatory features that exceed the sensitivity of Planck for a significant range of frequencies. Moreover, we forecast that the next generation of galaxy surveys, such as DESI and Euclid, will be able to improve current constraints by up to an order of magnitude over an expanded frequency range.
We study the effect of dark matter (DM) being encapsulated in primordial black holes (PBHs) on the power spectrum of density fluctuations $P(k)$; we also look at its effect on the abundance of haloes and their clustering. We allow the growth of Poisson fluctuations since matter and radiation equality and study both monochromatic and extended PBH mass distributions. We present updated monochromatic black hole mass constraints by demanding $<10%$ deviations from the $Lambda$ cold dark matter power spectrum at a scale of $k=1$hMpc$^{-1}$. Our results show that PBHs with masses $>10^4$h$^{-1}M_odot$ are excluded from conforming all of the DM in the Universe. We also apply this condition to our extended Press-Schechter (PS) mass functions, and find that the Poisson power is scale dependent even before applying evolution. We find that characteristic masses $M^*leq10^2 $h$^{-1}M_odot$ are allowed, {leaving only two characteristic PBH mass windows of PS mass functions when combining with previous constraints, at $M^*sim10^2$h$^{-1}M_odot$ and $sim10^{-8}$h$^{-1}M_odot$ where all of the DM can be in PBHs. The resulting DM halo mass functions within these windows are similar} to those resulting from cold dark matter made of fundamental particles. However, as soon as the parameters produce unrealistic $P(k)$, the resulting halo mass functions and their bias as a function of halo mass deviate strongly from the behaviour measured in the real Universe.
The properties of primordial curvature perturbations on small scales are still unknown while those on large scales have been well probed by the observations of the cosmic microwave background anisotropies and the large scale structure. In this paper, we propose the reconstruction method of primordial curvature perturbations on small scales through the merger rate of binary primordial black holes, which could form from large primordial curvature perturbation on small scales.
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