Evidence for Planck-scale resonant particle production during inflation from the CMB power spectrum

The power spectrum of the cosmic microwave background from both the {\it Planck} and {\it WMAP} data exhibits a slight dip for multipoles in the range of $l= 10-30$. We show that such a dip could be the result of the resonant creation of massive particles that couple to the inflaton field. For our best-fit models, the epoch of resonant particle creation reenters the horizon at a wave number of $k_* \sim 0.0011 \pm 0.0004$ ($h$ Mpc$^{-1}$). The amplitude and location of this feature corresponds to the creation of a number of degenerate fermion species of mass $\sim (8-11) /λ^{3/2}$ $m_{pl}$ during inflation where $λ\sim (1.0 \pm 0.5) N^{-2/5}$ is the coupling constant between the inflaton field and the created fermion species, while $N$ is the number of degenerate species. Although the evidence is of marginal statistical significance, this could constitute new observational hints of unexplored physics beyond the Planck scale

No reviews yet.

No comments yet.