On the modification of the cosmic microwave background anisotropy spectrum from canonical quantum gravity

TL;DR

This paper explores how semiclassical quantum gravity effects, derived from the Wheeler-DeWitt equation, can modify the cosmic microwave background anisotropy spectrum, revealing ambiguities and potential observational implications.

Contribution

It provides a more general analysis of quantum gravitational modifications to the CMB spectrum, highlighting solution ambiguities and deriving detailed formulas for complex parameters.

Findings

Quantum gravitational effects can either suppress or enhance large-scale power.

The magnitude of corrections is currently too small to be observable.

The analysis includes modifications to the spectral index and discusses unitarity issues.

Abstract

We evaluate the modifications to the cosmic microwave background anisotropy spectrum that result from a semiclassical expansion of the Wheeler-DeWitt equation. Recently, such an investigation in the case of a real scalar field coupled to gravity, has led to the prediction that the power at large scales is suppressed. We make here a more general analysis and show that there is an ambiguity in the choice of solution to the equations describing the quantum gravitational effects. Whereas one of the two solutions describes a suppression of power, the other one describes an enhancement. We investigate possible criteria for an appropriate choice of solution. The absolute value of the correction term is in both cases of the same order and currently not observable. We also obtain detailed formulae for arbitrary values of a complex parameter occurring in the general solution of the nonlinear equations of the model. We finally discuss the modification of the spectral index connected with the power spectrum and comment on the possibility of a quantum-gravity induced unitarity violation.