2016/05/21 by Andrea Ravenni, Licia Verde, Antonio J. Cuesta
Physics and Astronomy · #Cosmic microwave background #Cosmology #Cosmology and Gravitation Theories #Galaxies: Formation, Evolution, Phenomena #Galaxy #Particle physics theoretical and experimental studies #Planck #Power law #Sky #Smoothing #Spectral density #Tilt (camera) #astro-ph.CO #msc:85A40
paper · pdf · doi:10.1088/1475-7516/2016/08/028
17 pages, 10 figures
arxiv created 2016/05/21 · openalex created_date 2016/06/24 · openalex publication_date 2016/08/12 · arxiv updated 2016/08/24 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05
We present a minimally parametric, model independent reconstruction of the shape of the primordial power spectrum. Our smoothing spline technique is well-suited to search for smooth features such as deviations from scale invariance, and deviations from a power law such as running of the spectral index or small-scale power suppression. We use a comprehensive set of the state-of the art cosmological data: Planck observations of the temperature and polarisation anisotropies of the cosmic microwave background, WiggleZ and Sloan Digital Sky Survey Data Release 7 galaxy power spectra and the Canada-France-Hawaii Lensing Survey correlation function. This reconstruction strongly supports the evidence for a power law primordial power spectrum with a red tilt and disfavours deviations from a power law power spectrum including small-scale power suppression such as that induced by significantly massive neutrinos. This offers a powerful confirmation of the inflationary paradigm, justifying the adoption of the inflationary prior in cosmological analyses.