Speaker
Description
Recent observations about the cosmic microwave background show a clear discrepancy between the scale of inflation and the Planck scale expected in the conventional inflationary picture, based on simple chaotic inflationary models. I explore a possible resolution of this conflict by considering a slight modification of the standard general relativity scenario, which naturally incorporates a scale of power suppression consistent with observations. This last scale appears by the combined effect of the preinflationary background dynamics and an associated initial vacuum state for the cosmological perturbations which differs from the conventional Bunch-Davies state. Similarities with the situation found in cases of phenomonenological interest in Loop Quantum Cosmology are discussed.
