Searching for features of a string-inspired inflationary model with cosmological observations

Abstract

The latest Planck results show a power deficit in the temperature anisotropies near ℓ≈20 in the cosmic microwave background (CMB). This observation can hardly be explained within the standard inflationary Λ -cold-dark-matter (Λ CDM ) scenario. In this paper we consider a string theory inspired inflationary model (axion monodromy inflation) with a step-like modulation in the potential which gives rise to observable signatures in the primordial perturbations. One interesting phenomenon is that the primordial scalar modes experience a sudden suppression at a critical scale when the modulation occurs. By fitting to the CMB data, we find that the model can nicely explain the ℓ≈20 power deficit anomaly as well as predict specific patterns in the temperature-polarization correlation and polarization autocorrelation spectra. Though the significance of the result is not sufficient to claim a detection, our analysis reveals that fundamental physics at extremely high energy scales, namely, some effects inspired by string theory, may be observationally testable in forthcoming cosmological experiments.