Observational constraints on inflationary potentials within the quantum collapse framework

Publication date: Available online 14 February 2019Source: Physics of the Dark UniverseAuthor(s): Gabriel León, Alejandro Pujol, Susana J. Landau, María Pía PiccirilliAbstractThe physical mechanism responsible for the emergence of primordial cosmic seeds from a perfect isotropic and homogeneous Universe has not been fully addressed in standard cosmic inflation. To handle this shortcoming, D. Sudarsky et al have developed a proposal: the self-induced collapse hypothesis. In this scheme, the objective collapse of the inflaton’s wave function generates the inhomogeneity and anisotropy at all scales. In this paper we analyze the viability of a set of inflationary potentials in both the context of the collapse proposal and within the standard inflationary framework. For this, we perform a statistical analysis using recent CMB and BAO data to obtain the prediction for the scalar spectral index ns in the context of a particular collapse model: the Wigner scheme. The predicted ns and the tensor-to-scalar ratio r in terms of the slow roll parameters is different between the collapse scheme and the standard inflationary model. For each potential considered we compare the prediction of ns and r with the limits established by observational data in both pictures. The result of our analysis shows in most cases a difference in the inflationary potentials allowed by the observational limits in both frameworks. In particular, in the standard approach the more concave a potential is, the ...
Source: Physics of the Dark Universe - Category: Physics Source Type: research
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