Non-parametric reconstruction of the primordial power spectrum at horizon scales from wmap data

Sep, 2005
11 pages
Published in:
  • Mon.Not.Roy.Astron.Soc. 367 (2006) 1095-1102
e-Print:

Citations per year

200720112015201920230246810
Abstract: (arXiv)
We extend to large scales a method proposed in previous work that reconstructs non-parametrically the primordial power spectrum from cosmic microwave background data at high resolution. The improvement is necessary to account for the non-gaussianity of the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) likelihood due primarily to cosmic variance. We assume the concordance LambdaCDM cosmology, utilise a smoothing prior and perform Monte Carlo simulations around an initial power spectrum that is scale-free and with spectral index n_s=0.97, very close to the concordance spectrum. The horizon scale for the model we are considering corresponds to the wavenumber k_h=4.52X10^{-4} Mpc^{-1}. We find some evidence for the presence of features and we quantify the probabilities of exceeding the observed deviations in WMAP data with respect to the fiducial models. We detect the following marginal departures from a scale-free (spectral index n_s=0.97) initial spectrum: a cut-off at 0.0001
  • METHODS DATA ANALYSIS
  • CMB
  • COSMOLOGICAL PARAMETERS
  • EARLY UNIVERSE