Journal
PHYSICAL REVIEW D
Volume 84, Issue 6, Pages -Publisher
AMER PHYSICAL SOC
DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevD.84.063515
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Funding
- KICP under NSF [PHY-0114422]
- DOE [DE-FG02-90ER-40560]
- Packard Foundation
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Using a principal component basis that accommodates order unity features in the slow-roll parameters as fine as 1/10 of a decade across more than 2 decades of the inflationary expansion, we test slow-roll and single-field inflation with the WMAP7 data. Detection of any nonzero component would represent a violation of ordinary slow roll and indicate a feature in the inflaton potential or sound speed. Although one component shows a deviation at the 98% CL, it cannot be considered statistically significant given the 20 components tested. The maximum likelihood principal component parameters only improve 2 Delta lnL by 17 for the 20 parameters associated with known glitches in the WMAP power spectrum at multipoles l < 60. We make model-independent predictions for the matching glitches in the polarization spectrum that would test their inflationary origin. This complete analysis for band-limited features in the source function of generalized slow roll can be used to constrain parameters of specific models of the inflaton potential without requiring a separate likelihood analysis for each choice. We illustrate its use by placing bounds on the height and width of a steplike feature in the potential proposed to explain the glitch at 20 <= l <= 40. Even allowing for the presence of features in the temperature spectrum, single-field inflation makes sharp falsifiable predictions for the acoustic peaks in the polarization whose violation would require extra degrees of freedom.
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