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Features and New Physical Scales in Primordial Observables: Theory and Observation

9 Pith papers cite this work. Polarity classification is still indexing.

9 Pith papers citing it
abstract

All cosmological observations to date are consistent with adiabatic, Gaussian and nearly scale invariant initial conditions. These findings provide strong evidence for a particular symmetry breaking pattern in the very early universe (with a close to vanishing order parameter, $\epsilon$), widely accepted as conforming to the predictions of the simplest realizations of the inflationary paradigm. However, given that our observations are only privy to perturbations, in inferring something about the background that gave rise to them, it should be clear that many different underlying constructions project onto the same set of cosmological observables. Features in the primordial correlation functions, if present, would offer a unique and discriminating window onto the parent theory in which the mechanism that generated the initial conditions is embedded. In certain contexts, simple linear response theory allows us to infer new characteristic scales from the presence of features that can break the aforementioned degeneracies among different background models, and in some cases can even offer a limited spectroscopy of the heavier degrees of freedom that couple to the inflaton. In this review, we offer a pedagogical survey of the diverse, theoretically well grounded mechanisms which can imprint features into primordial correlation functions in addition to reviewing the techniques one can employ to probe observations. These observations include cosmic microwave background anisotropies and spectral distortions as well as the matter two and three point functions as inferred from large-scale structure and potentially, 21 cm surveys.

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2026 8 2021 1

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representative citing papers

(The) Wiggles going non-linear

astro-ph.CO · 2026-05-29 · unverdicted · novelty 6.0 · 2 refs

Calibrates a one-parameter semi-analytic damping model for oscillatory primordial power spectrum features using N-body simulations and validates sub-percent accuracy via GPR emulation when modulation frequency is high enough.

Scalar induced gravitational waves review

gr-qc · 2021-09-03 · unverdicted · novelty 2.0

A review that unifies analytical expressions for scalar-induced gravitational waves and emphasizes calculations for non-radiation-dominated cosmologies.

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Showing 9 of 9 citing papers.