Quantum slow-roll and quantum fast-roll inflationary initial conditions: CMB quadrupole suppression and further effects on the low CMB multipoles

TL;DR

This paper explores how quantum fast-roll initial conditions in inflation can naturally lead to the suppression of the CMB quadrupole and affect low multipoles, providing a quantum-based explanation for observed anomalies.

Contribution

It introduces a model of quantum fast-roll initial conditions that produce observable effects on the CMB low multipoles, contrasting with classical slow-roll inflation.

Findings

Quantum fast-roll conditions can produce sufficient inflation.

Corrections from quantum dynamics affect low CMB multipoles.

Model explains quadrupole suppression and other anomalies.

Abstract

Quantum fast-roll initial conditions for the inflaton which are different from the classical fast-roll conditions and from the quantum slow-roll conditions can lead to inflation that last long enough. These quantum fast-roll initial conditions for the inflaton allow for kinetic energies of the same order of the potential energies and nonperturbative inflaton modes with nonzero wavenumbers. Their evolution starts with a transitory epoch where the redshift due to the expansion succeeds to assemble the quantum excited modes of the inflaton in a homogeneous (zero mode) condensate, and the large value of the Hubble parameter succeeds to overdamp the fast-roll of the redshifted inflaton modes. After this transitory stage the effective classical slow-roll epoch is reached. Most of the efolds are produced during the slow-roll epoch and we recover the classical slow-roll results for the scalar and tensor metric perturbations plus corrections. These corrections are important, both for scalar and for tensor perturbations, if scales which are horizon-size today exited the horizon by the end of the transitory stage and as a consequence the lower CMB multipoles get suppressed (fast-roll) or enhanced (precondensate). These two types of corrections can compete and combine in a scale dependent manner. They arise as natural consequences of the quantum nonperturbative inflaton dynamics, and provide a consistent and contrastable model for the origin of the suppression of the quadrupole and for other departures of the low CMB multipoles from the slow-roll inflation-LambdaCMB model which are to be contrasted to the TE and EE multipoles and to the forthcoming and future CMB data.