2009/12/02 by Hiranya V. Peiris, Licia Verde · 3 citations
Mathematics · Physics and Astronomy · #Artificial intelligence #Astronomy #Astrophysics #Black Holes and Theoretical Physics #Computer science #Cosmic microwave background #Cosmology #Cosmology and Gravitation Theories #Dark Matter and Cosmic Phenomena #Mathematics #Parametric statistics #Physics #Planck #Power law #Prior probability #Quantum mechanics #Robustness (evolution) #Scale (ratio) #Scale invariance #Spectral density #Spectral index #Spectral line #Statistical physics #Statistics #Theoretical physics #astro-ph.CO
paper · pdf · doi:10.1103/physrevd.81.021302
published as Phys.Rev.D81:021302,2010 · 5 pages, 4 figures
arxiv created 2009/12/02 · openalex publication_date 2010/01/22 · arxiv updated 2010/04/06 · openalex created_date 2016/06/24 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05
We present a minimally parametric reconstruction of the primordial power spectrum using the most recent cosmic microwave background and large-scale structure data sets. Our goal is to constrain the shape of the power spectrum while simultaneously avoiding strong theoretical priors and over-fitting of the data. We find no evidence for any departure from a power-law spectral index. We also find that an exact scale-invariant power spectrum is disfavored by the data, but this conclusion is weaker than the corresponding result assuming a theoretically-motivated power-law spectral index prior. The reconstruction shows that better data are crucial to justify the adoption of such a strong theoretical prior observationally. These results can be used to determine the robustness of our present knowledge when compared with forthcoming precision data from Planck.