Observational signatures of pre-inflationary and lower-dimensional effective gravity

TL;DR

This paper investigates whether a pre-inflationary phase with effective two-dimensional gravity leaves observable signatures in primordial perturbations, concluding that no detectable effects are expected in the spectra.

Contribution

It models a pre-inflationary two-dimensional phase and demonstrates that such a transition does not produce observable signatures in the primordial power spectra.

Findings

No signatures in scalar and tensor spectra from the two-dimensional transition

Mode matching and modified dispersion relations yield similar results

Pre-inflationary two-dimensional phases are observationally indistinguishable from standard models

Abstract

Several alternative ways to quantize gravitational interactions seem to indicate that gravity at short distances is effectively two-dimensional. If this were true, and the energy scale at which the dimensional transition occurs is of the order of the inflationary one, it is reasonable to investigate eventual signatures in the primordial perturbation spectra. In this paper we look at this possibility by assuming that the inflationary era was preceded by an effectively two-dimensional evolution of the Universe. We model the transition with a mode matching and we show that, in this case, no observational signatures are expected in the tensor and scalar power spectra nor in their ratio. We also show that assuming modified dispersion relations before the matching between two sets of four-dimensional modes leads to similar results.