Features and New Physical Scales in Primordial Observables: Theory and Observation

TL;DR

This paper reviews how features in primordial correlation functions can reveal new physical scales and discriminate between different early universe models, using observational data from CMB, large-scale structure, and 21 cm surveys.

Contribution

It provides a pedagogical survey of mechanisms that imprint features in primordial correlations and discusses observational techniques to detect them.

Findings

Features can break degeneracies among models.

Characteristic scales can be inferred from features.

Potential to probe heavier degrees of freedom.

Abstract

All cosmological observations to date are consistent with adiabatic, Gaussian and nearly scale invariant initial conditions. These findings provide strong evidence for a particular symmetry breaking pattern in the very early universe (with a close to vanishing order parameter, $\epsilon$), widely accepted as conforming to the predictions of the simplest realizations of the inflationary paradigm. However, given that our observations are only privy to perturbations, in inferring something about the background that gave rise to them, it should be clear that many different underlying constructions project onto the same set of cosmological observables. Features in the primordial correlation functions, if present, would offer a unique and discriminating window onto the parent theory in which the mechanism that generated the initial conditions is embedded. In certain contexts, simple linear response theory allows us to infer new characteristic scales from the presence of features that can break the aforementioned degeneracies among different background models, and in some cases can even offer a limited spectroscopy of the heavier degrees of freedom that couple to the inflaton. In this review, we offer a pedagogical survey of the diverse, theoretically well grounded mechanisms which can imprint features into primordial correlation functions in addition to reviewing the techniques one can employ to probe observations. These observations include cosmic microwave background anisotropies and spectral distortions as well as the matter two and three point functions as inferred from large-scale structure and potentially, 21 cm surveys.