Large Scale Structure Forecast Constraints on Particle Production During Inflation

TL;DR

This paper forecasts how upcoming cosmic microwave background and galaxy surveys can significantly improve constraints on particle production features during inflation, refining our understanding of early universe physics.

Contribution

It provides forecasts for future survey constraints on inflationary particle production features, highlighting potential improvements over current limits.

Findings

Planck can constrain features to 0.5% level

SKA can improve constraints to 0.1% level

Future surveys can probe features at higher wave-numbers

Abstract

Bursts of particle production during inflation provide a well-motivated mechanism for creating bump like features in the primordial power spectrum. Current data constrains these features to be less than about 5% the size of the featureless primordial power spectrum at wavenumbers of about 0.1 h Mpc^{-1}. We forecast that the Planck cosmic microwave background experiment will be able to strengthen this constraint to the 0.5% level. We also predict that adding data from a square kilometer array (SKA) galaxy redshift survey would improve the constraint to about the 0.1% level. For features at larger wave-numbers, Planck will be limited by Silk damping and foregrounds. While, SKA will be limited by non-linear effects. We forecast for a Cosmic Inflation Probe (CIP) galaxy redshift survey, similar constraints can be achieved up to about a wavenumber of 1 h Mpc^{-1}.