Power spectrum for inflation models with quantum and thermal noises

TL;DR

This paper calculates the inflationary power spectrum across cold and warm regimes using stochastic inflation, analyzing parameter spaces against recent WMAP and Planck data, and finds warm inflation models remain viable.

Contribution

It provides a unified stochastic inflation framework for both cold and warm inflation, analyzing parameter constraints with current cosmological observations.

Findings

Warm inflation models are compatible with recent data.

Higher order polynomial potentials are less favored.

Cold inflation models are strongly disfavored or ruled out.

Abstract

We determine the power spectrum for inflation models covering all regimes from cold (isentropic) to warm (nonisentropic) inflation. We work in the context of the stochastic inflation approach, which can nicely describe both types of inflationary regimes concomitantly. A throughout analysis is carried out to determine the allowed parameter space for simple single field polynomial chaotic inflation models that is consistent with the most recent cosmological data from the nine-year Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) and in conjunction with other observational cosmological sources. We present the results for both the amplitude of the power spectrum, the spectral index and for the tensor to scalar curvature perturbation amplitude ratio. We briefly discuss cases when running is present. Despite single field polynomial-type inflaton potential models be strongly disfavored, or even be already ruled out in their simplest versions in the case of cold inflation, this is not the case for nonisentropic inflation models in general (warm inflation in particular), though higher order polynomial potentials (higher than quartic order) tend to become less favorable also in this case, presenting a much smaller region of parameter space compatible with the recent observational cosmological data. Our findings also remain valid in face of the recently released Planck results.