2005/04/18 by S. Bachmann, Sven Bachmann, Achim Kempf +3
Physics and Astronomy · #FOS: Physical sciences #General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology (gr-qc) #Quantum Electrodynamics and Casimir Effect #Quantum Mechanics and Applications #gr-qc
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.gr-qc/0504076
26 pages, LaTeX, 3 figures
arxiv created 2005/04/18 · openalex publication_date 2005/04/18 · arxiv updated 2009/12/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
It is known that, through inflation, Planck scale phenomena should have left an imprint in the cosmic microwave background. The magnitude of this imprint is expected to be suppressed by a factor σn where σ≈ 10-5 is the ratio of the Planck length to the Hubble length during inflation. While there is no consensus about the value of n, it is generally thought that n will determine whether the imprint is observable. Here, we suggest that the magnitude of the imprint may not be suppressed by any power of σ and that, instead, σ may merely quantify the amount of fine tuning required to achieve an imprint of order one. To this end, we show that the UV/IR scale separation, σ, in the analogous case of the Casimir effect plays exactly this role.