Correlated adiabatic and isocurvature CMB fluctuations in the wake of the WMAP

Abstract

In general correlated models, in addition to the usual adiabatic component with a spectral index n_ad1 there is another adiabatic component with a spectral index n_ad2 generated by entropy perturbation during inflation. We extend the analysis of a correlated mixture of adiabatic and isocurvature CMB fluctuations of the WMAP group, who set the two adiabatic spectral indices equal. Allowing n_ad1 and n_ad2 to vary independently we find that the WMAP data favor models where the two adiabatic components have opposite spectral tilts. Using the WMAP data only, the 2-sigma upper bound for the isocurvature fraction f_iso of the initial power spectrum at k_0=0.05 Mpc^{-1} increases somewhat, e.g., from 0.76 of n_ad2 = n_ad1 models to 0.84 with a prior n_iso < 1.84 for the isocurvature spectral index. We also comment on a possible degeneration between the correlation component and the optical depth tau. Moreover, the measured low quadrupole in the TT angular power could be achieved by a strong negative correlation, but then one needs a large tau to fit the TE spectrum.