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arXiv · 1505.00745

Sensitivity of inflationary predictions to pre-inflationary phases

Sina Bahrami·Eanna E. Flanagan
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Abstract

How sensitive are the predictions of inflation to pre-inflationary conditions when the number of efolds of inflation is not too large? In an attempt to address this question, we consider a simple model where the inflationary era is preceded by an era dominated by a radiation fluid, which is coupled to the inflaton only gravitationally and which extends back to the Planck era. We show that there is a natural generalized Bunch-Davies vacuum state for perturbations to the coupled inflaton-gravity-fluid system at early times. With this choice of initial state the model predicts interesting deviations from the standard power spectrum of single field slow-roll inflation at large scales. However, the deviations are too small to be observable in near future CMB observations.

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Sina Bahrami, Eanna E. Flanagan. 2016-01-19. Sensitivity of inflationary predictions to pre-inflationary phases. https://doi.org/10.1088/1475-7516%2F2016%2F01%2F027

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