A Truncated Primordial Power Spectrum and its Impact on CMB Polarization

TL;DR

This paper explores how a hypothesized cutoff in the primordial power spectrum, due to delayed inflation, can improve the fit of cosmological models to CMB observations and predicts observable signatures in polarization data.

Contribution

It introduces the concept of a cutoff k_min in the primordial spectrum and demonstrates its impact on CMB temperature and polarization measurements, aligning theory with observations.

Findings

A non-zero k_min improves the fit to Planck CMB data.

The cutoff creates observable signatures in polarization spectra.

Future measurements could detect k_min effects in B-mode polarization.

Abstract

We investigate the impact of a hypothesized delayed initiation of inflation, characterized by a cutoff k_min to the primordial power spectrum in the cosmic microwave background (CMB). This cutoff affects both the scalar and tensor spectra, which therefore impacts several measurements of the temperature and polarization distributions. We calculate the angular power spectrum and correlation function with and without k_min in the context of Planck-LCDM, and demonstrate that a non-zero k_min significantly improves the alignment between theory and the observations, including the temperature, E-mode polarization, TE cross-correlation, Q+U polarization and Q-U polarization. It creates an observable signature in both the angular power spectrum and correlation function for all cases. We thus also explore the B-mode polarization, for which current data are not yet precise enough to determine k_min, but whose impact should be detectable with high-precision measurements using future missions, such as LiteBIRD, if the tensor-to-scalar ratio, r, is not much smaller than its current upper limit. We find that the introduction of k_min not only addresses large-angle anomalies in the CMB but also provides a more consistent framework for understanding the early Universe's inflationary phase. These findings highlight the importance of future high-precision CMB observations in validating the existence and implications of k_min.