Do We Live in a Vanilla Universe? Theoretical Perspectives on WMAP

Details Do We Live in a Vanilla Universe? Theoretical Perspectives on WMAP Do We Live in a Vanilla Universe? Theoretical Perspectives on WMAP

2003-08-10

arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0308160v1

AIP Conf.Proc.698:64-73,2004

Astronomy and Astrophysics

Astrophysics

10 pages, based on paper delivered at CIPANP 2003

Scientific paper

10.1063/1.1664199

I discuss the theoretical implications of the WMAP results, stressing WMAP's detection of a correlation between the E-mode polarization and temperature anisotropies, which provides strong support for the overall inflationary paradigm. I point out that almost all inflationary models have a ``vanilla limit,'' where their parameters cannot be distinguished from a genuinely de Sitter inflationary phase. Because its findings are consistent with vanilla inflation, WMAP cannot exclude entire classes of inflationary models. Finally, I summarize hints in the current dataset that the CMB contains relics of new physics, and the possibility that we can use observational data to reconstruct the inflaton potential.

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