Planck residuals anomaly as a fingerprint of alternative scenarios to inflation

TL;DR

This paper investigates whether oscillatory features in the CMB power spectrum could explain the lensing anomaly, exploring models with a massive scalar field or sharp features during inflation, and assesses their statistical fit to Planck data.

Contribution

It introduces and constrains models with oscillatory primordial features as alternatives to standard inflation, analyzing their impact on the lensing anomaly using Planck data.

Findings

Oscillatory models mildly reduce the lensing anomaly

Oscillations with $A_L=1$ have lowest $ ext{chi}^2$ improvement

Models are compatible with matter and radiation bounce scenarios

Abstract

Planck's residuals of the CMB temperature power spectrum present a curious oscillatory shape that resembles an extra smoothing effect of lensing and is the source of the lensing anomaly. The smoothing effect of lensing to the CMB temperature power spectrum is, to some extent, degenerate with oscillatory modulations of the primordial power spectrum, in particular if the frequency is close to that of the acoustic peaks. We consider the possibility that the lensing anomaly reported by the latest Planck 2018 results may be hinting at an oscillatory modulation generated by a massive scalar field during an alternative scenario to inflation or by a sharp feature during inflation. We use the full TTTEEE+low E CMB likelihood from Planck to derive constraints on these two types of models. We obtain that in both cases the $A_L$ anomaly is mildly reduced to slightly less than $2\sigma$, to be compared with the $2.8\sigma$ deviation from $A_L=1$ in $\Lambda$CDM. Although the oscillatory features are not able to satisfactorily ease the lensing anomaly, we find that the oscillatory modulation generated during an alternative scenario alone, i.e. with $A_L=1$, presents the lowest value of $\chi^2$, with $\Delta\chi^2=-13$ compared to $\Lambda$CDM. Furthermore, the Akaike Information Criterion suggests that such an oscillation constitutes an attractive candidate since it has a value $\Delta{\rm AIC}=-5$ with respect to $\Lambda$CDM, comparable to the $A_L$ parameter. We also obtain that the equation of state parameter in the alternative scenario is given at $1\sigma$ by $w=0.13\pm0.17$. Interestingly, the matter bounce and radiation bounce scenarios are compatible with our results. We discuss how these models of oscillatory features can be tested with future observations.