Abstract
Cosmological observations have provided us with the measurement of just three numbers that characterize the very early universe: 1 - n(s), N and ln Delta(2)(R). Although each of the three numbers individually carries limited information about the physics of inflation, one may hope to extract non-trivial information from relations among them. Invoking minimality, namely the absence of ad hoc large numbers, we find two viable and mutually exclusive inflationary scenarios. The first is the well-known inverse relation between 1 - n(s) and N. The second implies a new relation between 1 - n(s) and ln Delta(2)(R), which might provide us with a handle on the beginning of inflation and predicts the intriguing lower bound on the tensor-to-scalar ratio r > 0.006 (95% CL).
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Article number | 058 |
| Number of pages | 9 |
| Journal | Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics |
| Volume | 2015 |
| Issue number | 9 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - Sept 2015 |
Funding
We would like to thank Paolo Creminelli, Guido D'Amico, Matthew Kleban, Marjorie Schillo, Gabriele Trevisan, Matias Zaldarriaga and Ivonne Zavala for useful discussions and comments on the draft. E.P. is supported by the D-ITP consortium, a program of the Netherlands organization for scientific research (NWO) that is funded by the Dutch Ministry of Education, Culture and Science (OCW).
Keywords
- inflation
- non-gaussianity
- CMBR theory