Choice of vacuum state and the relation between inflationary and Planck scales

Fuente: arXiv
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Autores principales: Kowalczyk, Maciej, Marugán, Guillermo A. Mena
Formato: Preprint
Publicado: 2024
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author Kowalczyk, Maciej
Marugán, Guillermo A. Mena
author_facet Kowalczyk, Maciej
Marugán, Guillermo A. Mena
contents Recent observations about the cosmic microwave background evidence a clear discrepancy between the scale of inflation and the Planck scale expected in the conventional inflationary picture, based on simple chaotic inflationary models. This paper explores a possible resolution of this conflict by considering a slight modification of the standard general relativity scenario, which naturally incorporates a cutoff scale consistent with the observations. This last scale of power suppression appears by the combined effect of the preinflationary background dynamics and an associated initial vacuum state for the cosmological perturbations which differs from the conventional Bunch-Davies state of slow-roll inflation. We revise and correct previous discussions in the literature about the relation between this scale and the scale corresponding to the onset of inflation. The mechanism that produces this cutoff is intimately related to the criterion determining a privileged vacuum state for the primordial perturbations. We adhere to a recent proposal based on an asymptotic diagonalization of the Hamiltonian of the perturbations and leading to a non-oscillatory primordial power spectrum. With this choice, we are able to investigate analytically the model, studying in detail some physically interesting cases. These analytic calculations provide further support to our arguments about the relation between the different scales of the system.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2409_15886
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Choice of vacuum state and the relation between inflationary and Planck scales
Kowalczyk, Maciej
Marugán, Guillermo A. Mena
General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology
Recent observations about the cosmic microwave background evidence a clear discrepancy between the scale of inflation and the Planck scale expected in the conventional inflationary picture, based on simple chaotic inflationary models. This paper explores a possible resolution of this conflict by considering a slight modification of the standard general relativity scenario, which naturally incorporates a cutoff scale consistent with the observations. This last scale of power suppression appears by the combined effect of the preinflationary background dynamics and an associated initial vacuum state for the cosmological perturbations which differs from the conventional Bunch-Davies state of slow-roll inflation. We revise and correct previous discussions in the literature about the relation between this scale and the scale corresponding to the onset of inflation. The mechanism that produces this cutoff is intimately related to the criterion determining a privileged vacuum state for the primordial perturbations. We adhere to a recent proposal based on an asymptotic diagonalization of the Hamiltonian of the perturbations and leading to a non-oscillatory primordial power spectrum. With this choice, we are able to investigate analytically the model, studying in detail some physically interesting cases. These analytic calculations provide further support to our arguments about the relation between the different scales of the system.
title Choice of vacuum state and the relation between inflationary and Planck scales
topic General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2409.15886