2006/10/21 by William H. Kinney, Magaretha L. Pretorius, Christian Knigge +1
Earth and Planetary Sciences · Mathematics · Physics and Astronomy · #Amplitude #Astrophysics #Black Holes and Theoretical Physics #CMB cold spot #Classical mechanics #Cosmic microwave background #Cosmology #Cosmology and Gravitation Theories #Geometry #Geophysics and Gravity Measurements #Gravitation #Gravitational wave #Inflation (cosmology) #Invariant (physics) #Mathematical physics #Mathematics #Physics #Quantum mechanics #Scalar (mathematics) #Scale invariance #Spectral density #Statistics #Tensor (intrinsic definition) #Theoretical physics #astro-ph #hep-ph
paper · pdf · doi:10.1063/1.2775890
published as AIP Conf.Proc.928:3-10,2007 · To appear in the proceedings of Colliders to Cosmic Rays 2007. 8 pages, 2 figures. (V2: Minor typo corrected)
openalex publication_date 2007/01/01 · arxiv created 2007/07/23 · arxiv updated 2009/12/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05
I discuss the current status of inflationary cosmology in light of the recent WMAP 3‐year data release. The basic predictions of inflation are all supported by the data. Inflation also makes predictions which are have not been well tested by current data but can be by future experiments, most notably a deviation from a scale‐invariant power spectrum and the production of primordial gravitational waves. A scale‐invariant spectrum is disfavored by current data, but not conclusively. Tensor modes are currently poorly constrained, and slow‐roll inflation does not make an unambiguous prediction of the expected amplitude of primordial gravitational waves. A tensor/scalar ratio of r ≃ 0.01 is within reach of near‐future measurements.