WMAPping inflationary physics

Alessandro Melchiorri; Antonio Riotto; Edward W. Kolb; William H. Kinney

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WMAPping inflationary physics

William H. Kinney, Edward W. Kolb, Alessandro Melchiorri, Antonio Riotto

High Energy Physics - Phenomenology · Submitted 12 May 2003

abstract compiled · 2026-09-23 · no language-model review

The authors' main claim The reconstruction process indicates that a wide variety of smooth potentials for the inflaton are consistent with the data, implying that the first-year WMAP result is still too crude to constrain significantly either the height or the shape of the inflaton potential.

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arXiv IDhep-ph/0305130 (version 2)

Pith IDA7I6LOYN, Pith's permanent record of this paper and its review

CitationAlessandro Melchiorri, Antonio Riotto, Edward W. Kolb, William H. Kinney. "WMAPping inflationary physics." arXiv:hep-ph/0305130 (2003). https://pith.science/paper/A7I6LOYN

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What the abstract itself states, as probabilities: claims first 0.03 · states limitation 0.95 · human participants 0.01 · controlled comparison 0.09 · randomized assignment 0.01 · states quantitative result 0.98 · compares with prior results 0.37 · mentions code or data availability 0.02.

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We extract parameters relevant for distinguishing among single-field inflation models from the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) data set, and from a combination of the WMAP data and seven other Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) experiments. We use only CMB data and perform a likelihood analysis over a grid of models including the full error covariance matrix. We find that a model with a scale-invariant scalar power spectrum ($n=1$), no tensor contribution, and no running of the spectral index, is within the 1-$\sigma$ contours of both data sets. We then apply the Monte Carlo reconstruction technique to both data sets to generate an ensemble of inflationary potentials consistent with observations. None of the three basic classes of inflation models (small-field, large-field, and hybrid) are completely ruled out, although hybrid models are favored by the best-fit region. The reconstruction process indicates that a wide variety of smooth potentials for the inflaton are consistent with the data, implying that the first-year WMAP result is still too crude to constrain significantly either the height or the shape of the inflaton potential. In particular, the lack of evidence for tensor fluctuations makes it impossible to constrain the energy scale of inflation. Nonetheless, the data rule out a large portion of the available parameter space for inflation. For instance, we find that potentials of the form $V = \lambda \phi^4$ are ruled out to $3\sigma$ by the combined data set, but not by the WMAP data taken alone.

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What the classifier reports for each sentence. The number is the probability it gave the label.
#	sentence	role	the authors' own work	states the main conclusion	strength
s0	We extract parameters relevant for distinguishing among single-field inflation models from the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) data set, and from a combination of the WMAP data and seven other Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) experiments.	contribution 0.87	0.96	0.06	asserted 0.97
s1	We use only CMB data and perform a likelihood analysis over a grid of models including the full error covariance matrix.	method 0.99	0.95	0.03	asserted 0.98
s2	We find that a model with a scale-invariant scalar power spectrum ($n=1$), no tensor contribution, and no running of the spectral index, is within the 1-$\sigma$ contours of both data sets.	result 1.00	0.97	0.29	asserted 0.99
s3	We then apply the Monte Carlo reconstruction technique to both data sets to generate an ensemble of inflationary potentials consistent with observations.	method 0.93	0.96	0.04	asserted 0.99
s4	None of the three basic classes of inflation models (small-field, large-field, and hybrid) are completely ruled out, although hybrid models are favored by the best-fit region.	result 0.98	0.91	0.18	asserted 0.99
s5	The reconstruction process indicates that a wide variety of smooth potentials for the inflaton are consistent with the data, implying that the first-year WMAP result is still too crude to constrain significantly either the height or the shape of the inflaton potential.	interpretation 0.83	0.92	0.30	hedged possibility 0.83
s6	In particular, the lack of evidence for tensor fluctuations makes it impossible to constrain the energy scale of inflation.	interpretation 0.77	0.71	0.13	asserted 1.00
s7	Nonetheless, the data rule out a large portion of the available parameter space for inflation.	result 0.89	0.86	0.30	asserted 1.00
s8	For instance, we find that potentials of the form $V = \lambda \phi^4$ are ruled out to $3\sigma$ by the combined data set, but not by the WMAP data taken alone.	result 1.00	0.96	0.09	asserted 1.00

What kind of paper the classifier reports this is: empirical study 0.56 · evidence from analysis of existing data 1.00.

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The paper

Original abstract

We extract parameters relevant for distinguishing among single-field inflation models from the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) data set, and from a combination of the WMAP data and seven other Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) experiments. We use only CMB data and perform a likelihood analysis over a grid of models including the full error covariance matrix. We find that a model with a scale-invariant scalar power spectrum ($n=1$), no tensor contribution, and no running of the spectral index, is within the 1-$\sigma$ contours of both data sets. We then apply the Monte Carlo reconstruction technique to both data sets to generate an ensemble of inflationary potentials consistent with observations. None of the three basic classes of inflation models (small-field, large-field, and hybrid) are completely ruled out, although hybrid models are favored by the best-fit region. The reconstruction process indicates that a wide variety of smooth potentials for the inflaton are consistent with the data, implying that the first-year WMAP result is still too crude to constrain significantly either the height or the shape of the inflaton potential. In particular, the lack of evidence for tensor fluctuations makes it impossible to constrain the energy scale of inflation. Nonetheless, the data rule out a large portion of the available parameter space for inflation. For instance, we find that potentials of the form $V = \lambda \phi^4$ are ruled out to $3\sigma$ by the combined data set, but not by the WMAP data taken alone.

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References

Forward citations

Cited by 5 Pith papers

Reviewed papers in the Pith corpus that reference this work. Sorted by Pith novelty score. Full citation record

Recovering the Inflationary Potential and Primordial Power Spectrum With a Slow Roll Prior: Methodology and Application to WMAP 3 Year Data
astro-ph 2006-03 conditional novelty 7.0 of 10

A new Markov Chain Monte Carlo method that varies the Hubble slow roll parameters directly, using the inflationary flow equations, is applied to WMAP3 and SDSS data, yielding tight constraints on inflationary models a...
What does inflation really predict?
astro-ph 2004-10 accept novelty 7.0 of 10

For a multi-minimum inflaton potential, inflation robustly predicts flat space and a cosmological constant, and in the high-energy limit reproduces the phi-squared model's ns around 0.96 and r around 0.15.
Cosmological parameters from SDSS and WMAP
astro-ph 2003-10 conditional novelty 6.0 of 10

SDSS galaxy clustering combined with WMAP tightens the Hubble constant to about 0.70, the matter density to about 0.30, and the sum of neutrino masses to below 1.7 eV, all consistent with flat Lambda-CDM.
On the reheating stage after inflation
hep-ph 2003-07 accept novelty 6.0 of 10

Thermal masses of inflaton decay products can shut off inflaton decay, so the final reheating temperature is set by the inflaton mass rather than by its decay coupling.
Generating Primordial Black Holes Via Hilltop-Type Inflation Models
astro-ph.CO 2009-06 conditional novelty 5.0 of 10

Hilltop inflation potentials with self-interaction power p at most 3 can generate a large enough small-scale spectrum to form primordial black holes, and WMAP5 data tighten exclusions on the running-mass model.

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8 arXiv papers cite this in 9 sentences

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Uses its method or tool 2 papers

To the lowest order in slow-roll parameters, the uncertainties $ΔR$ and $Δn_S$ in terms of the uncertainty in the number of e-folds $ΔN$ are given by [ref] : [equation] The theoretical uncertainty on the tensor spectral index in the standard 4-D inflation can be straightforward obtained from Eq.([ref]) by using Eqs.(35) and (36): [equation] The estimate of $Δn^c_T/ΔN$ should be compared to $Δn_T=n$.

From WMAP to Planck: Exact reconstruction of 4- and 5-dimensional inflationary potential from high precision CMB measurements · The 4-D and 5-D single-field inflation consistency relations · 0.87
The method is described in more detail in Refs. [ref] .

Impact of general reionization scenarios on extraction of inflationary parameters · Monte Carlo Reconstruction of the inflationary potential · 0.82

Cites it as background 3 papers

Some more involved analyses have also been performed focusing on reconstruction of the potential of the inflaton or slow-roll flow parameters [ref] .

Probing the primordial power spectra with inflationary priors · Introduction · 0.93
Before investigating how additional observables can improve on the degenerate case, we examine the effect of the degeneracy on the zoology classification of inflation models [ref] .

The Degeneracy Problem in Non-Canonical Inflation · No Detection of Non-Gaussianity · 0.91
Attempts have been made to classify singlefield inflation models by the curvature $V”$ of the potential [ref] .

Large and small field inflation from hyperbolic sigma models · Global structure of the potential surface of $j-$inflation · 0.99

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