Constraining primordial oscillations and inflationary particle production with Planck, ACT DR6, and DESI DR2
Simran K. Nerval, Renee Hlozek, Hidde T. Jense, J. Richard Bond
astro-ph.CO
Submitted: 2026-06-26
Comments: 34 pages, 24 figures, and 5 tables
License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
The gist: Non-standard inflationary models often predict oscillatory features in the primordial power spectrum.
Terminology
Abstract
Non-standard inflationary models often predict oscillatory features in the primordial power spectrum. We present constraints on general oscillatory templates for primordial power spectra, including those that vary linearly and logarithmically with wavenumber, as well as oscillations induced by inflationary particle production. We utilize the Planck 2018 and Atacama Cosmology Telescope Data Release 6 cosmic microwave background data as well as large-scale structure data from the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument Data Release 2. To efficiently explore the multimodal posteriors for these models as well as performing mode comparisons, we integrate the preconditioned sequential Monte Carlo sampler, pocoMC, into the widely used sampling code, Cobaya. We find that the combined dataset tightens the 95% CL upper bounds on the general oscillation amplitudes to A lin < 0.021, A log < 0.022, and A log rf < 0.023, restricting the amplitude to about 2%, A s. For the inflationary particle production model, our analysis places a maximum a posteriori constraint on the coupling constant of g = 0.034. While these models all provide an improved fit to the data compared to the concordance CDM model, the Bayesian evidence still reveals a moderate preference for CDM compared to models with general oscillations and is inconclusive regarding the particle production model, suggesting that the added complexity of these models beyond the standard model is not statistically justified by current data.
Sources
- Planck 2018 results. I. Overview and the cosmological legacy of Planck
- Planck 2018 results. V. CMB power spectra and likelihoods
- The Atacama Cosmology Telescope: The Receiver and Instrumentation
- The Atacama Cosmology Telescope: The polarization-sensitive ACTPol instrument
- Advanced ACTPol Cryogenic Detector Arrays and Readout
- The Atacama Cosmology Telescope: DR6 Power Spectra, Likelihoods and $\Lambda$CDM Parameters
- SPT-3G D1: CMB temperature and polarization power spectra and cosmology from 2019 and 2020 observations of the SPT-3G Main field
- The Atacama Cosmology Telescope: DR6 Constraints on Extended Cosmological Models
- Improved limits on the tensor-to-scalar ratio using BICEP and Planck
- Drifting Oscillations in Axion Monodromy
- Productive Interactions: heavy particles and non-Gaussianity
- Unwinding Inflation
- Nongaussianity from Particle Production During Inflation
- Resonant particle production during inflation: a full analytical study
- DESI DR2 Results I: Baryon Acoustic Oscillations from the Lyman Alpha Forest
- DESI DR2 Results II: Measurements of Baryon Acoustic Oscillations and Cosmological Constraints
- Tightening constraints on primordial oscillations with latest ACT and SPT data
- pocoMC: A Python package for accelerated Bayesian inference in astronomy and cosmology
- Accelerating astronomical and cosmological inference with Preconditioned Monte Carlo
- Probing inflationary particle production with the CMB power spectrum
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