The pre-inflationary dynamics of loop quantum cosmology: confronting quantum gravity with observations

By Iván Agulló, Abhay Ashtekar, W. Nelson. 2012

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Using techniques from loop quantum gravity, the standard theory of cosmological perturbations was recently generalized to encompass the Planck era. We now apply this framework to explore pre-inflationary dynamics. The framework enables us to isolate and resolve the true trans-Planckian difficulties, with interesting lessons both for theory and observations. Specifically, for a large class of initial conditions at the bounce, we are led to a self consistent extension of the inflationary paradigm over the 11 orders of magnitude in density and curvature, from the big bounce to the onset of slow roll. In addition, for a narrow window of initial conditions, there are departures from the standard paradigm, with novel effects—such as a modification of the consistency relation between the ratio of the tensor to scalar power spectrum and the tensor spectral index, as well as a new source for non-Gaussianities—which could extend the reach of cosmological observations to the deep Planck regime of the early universe. Communicated by P Singh

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Nuclear and High Energy Physics, Statistical and Nonlinear Physics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/c3de9d314f1e67f32e5260c90003fc77c1377e86