Imprints of a primordial preferred direction on the microwave background

Lotty Ackerman, Sean M. Carroll, and Mark B. Wise
Phys. Rev. D 75, 083502 – Published 5 April 2007; Erratum Phys. Rev. D 80, 069901 (2009)

Abstract

Rotational invariance is a well-established feature of low-energy physics. Violations of this symmetry must be extremely small today, but could have been larger in earlier epochs. In this paper we examine the consequences of a small breaking of rotational invariance during the inflationary era when the primordial density fluctuations were generated. Assuming that a fixed-norm vector picked out a preferred-direction during the inflationary era, we explore the imprint it would leave on the cosmic microwave background anisotropy, and provide explicit formulas for the expected amplitudes almalm* of the spherical-harmonic coefficients. We suggest that it is natural to expect that the imprint on the primordial power spectrum of a preferred spatial direction is approximately scale-invariant, and examine a simple model in which this is true.

  • Received 29 January 2007

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevD.75.083502

©2007 American Physical Society

Erratum

Erratum: Imprints of a primordial preferred direction on the microwave background [Phys. Rev. D 75, 083502 (2007)]

Lotty Ackerman, Sean M. Carroll, and Mark B. Wise
Phys. Rev. D 80, 069901 (2009)

Authors & Affiliations

Lotty Ackerman, Sean M. Carroll, and Mark B. Wise

  • California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, California 91125, USA

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Issue

Vol. 75, Iss. 8 — 15 April 2007

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