Viability of the matter bounce scenario in Loop Quantum Cosmology for general potentials

TL;DR

This paper investigates the matter bounce scenario within Loop Quantum Cosmology, demonstrating that teleparallel LQC aligns well with current observational data, including BICEP2 and Planck results, while holonomy corrected LQC has some limitations.

Contribution

It compares teleparallel and holonomy corrected Loop Quantum Cosmology models for matter bounce scenarios with realistic potentials, showing their compatibility with observational data.

Findings

Teleparallel LQC fits well with BICEP2 and Planck data.

Holonomy corrected LQC has a smaller tensor/scalar ratio.

Some potentials disfavor holonomy corrected LQC based on BICEP2 results.

Abstract

We consider the matter bounce scenario in Loop Quantum Cosmology (LQC) for physical potentials that at early times provide a nearly matter dominated Universe in the contracting phase, having a reheating mechanism in the expanding phase, i.e., being able to release the energy of the scalar field creating particles that thermalize in order to match with the hot Friedmann Universe, and finally at late times leading to the current cosmic acceleration. For these models, numerically solving the dynamical equations we have seen that the teleparallel version of LQC leads to theoretical results that fit well with current observational data. More precisely, in teleparallel LQC there is a set of solutions which leads to theoretical results that match correctly with last BICEP2 data, and there is another set whose theoretical results fit well with {\it Planck's} experimental data. On the other hand, in holonomy corrected LQC the theoretical value of the tensor/scalar ratio is smaller than in teleparallel LQC, which means that there is always a set of solutions that matches with {\it Planck's} data, but for some potentials BICEP2 experimental results disfavours holonomy corrected LQC.