Paper detail

The Shape of the Primordial Power Spectrum: A Last Stand Before Planck

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.