Power spectrum nulls due to non-standard inflationary evolution

TL;DR

This paper investigates how non-standard inflationary models can produce sharp nulls in the primordial power spectrum, revealing potential quantum signatures of the early universe's evolution.

Contribution

It demonstrates that power spectrum nulls can naturally occur due to super-Hubble evolution in various inflationary scenarios, not just fine-tuned initial conditions.

Findings

Nulls in PPS can arise from generic inflationary dynamics.

Super-Hubble evolution influences the formation of power spectrum nulls.

Examples include punctuated inflation and Starobinsky-break models.

Abstract

The simplest models of inflation based on slow roll produce nearly scale invariant primordial power spectra (PPS). But there are also numerous models that predict radically broken scale invariant PPS. In particular, markedly cuspy dips in the PPS correspond to nulls where the perturbation amplitude, hence PPS, goes through a zero at a specific wavenumber. Near this wavenumber, the true quantum nature of the generation mechanism of the primordial fluctuations may be revealed. Naively these features may appear to arise from fine tuned initial conditions. However, we show that this behavior arises under fairly generic set of conditions involving super-Hubble scale evolution of perturbation modes during inflation. We illustrate this with the well-studied examples of punctuated inflation and the Starobinsky-break model.