Superoscillatory initial states during inflation: theory, CMB constraints, and prospects for galaxy clustering

arXiv:2606.25133 · astro-ph.CO, gr-qc, hep-th, quant-ph · Submitted 2026-06-23 · Read on arXiv

Ali Nayeri

astro-ph.CO, gr-qc, hep-th, quant-ph

Submitted: 2026-06-23

Comments: Accepted for publication in Physical Review D. 17 pages, 8 figures

Journal ref: Phys. Rev. D 114, 023508 (2026)

DOI: 10.1103/b4yl-qlxn

License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

The gist: We construct an explicit boundary-action realization of superoscillatory initial states (SIS) for inflation, in which quantum interference within a band-limited initial wavefunctional generates a

Terminology

Abstract

We construct an explicit boundary-action realization of superoscillatory initial states (SIS) for inflation, in which quantum interference within a band-limited initial wavefunctional generates a spectrally localized Bogoliubov excitation with a rapidly winding phase. Starting from a quadratic boundary term on the initial time surface, we derive the Bogoliubov coefficients and the resulting primordial curvature spectrum, obtaining a localized oscillatory feature fixed by the superoscillatory parameters (a,N) rather than imposed phenomenologically. We compute the projection of this feature onto CMB angular power spectra and show that transfer-function smearing strongly suppresses the oscillatory component; full CAMB calculations confirm the qualitative effect and show that a simple Gaussian approximation overestimates the peak signal by about a factor of three. Using Planck 2018 TT data, we obtain an indicative matched-filter bound lambda 0.05 for a representative feature centered near the first acoustic peak, k/k* = 0.05 at k* = 1.45 times 10-2, Mpc-1. We further derive correlated predictions for polarization and the bispectrum, identify structural constraints that distinguish SIS from generic excited-state models, and show that galaxy clustering provides a qualitatively more powerful probe because it preserves the full oscillatory structure that CMB projection suppresses. This framework provides a concrete and testable realization of how initial-state quantum interference can imprint itself on cosmological observables.

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