IAU02411
Presentation type requested: EITHER
THE PRIMORIDIAL POWER SPECTRUM
Sarah L Bridle
Institute of Astronomy
We reconstruct the power spectrum of fluctuations in the post-inflation universe using the latest cosmic microwave background anisotropy and galaxy redshift survey data. We investigate various parameterizations including a model motivated by double inflation, which allows a change in amplitude around a given scale, and a reconstruction using several wavenumber bands (see astro-ph/0302306 for more information). When we allow these coarse reconstructions to search for features in the range 0.01 < k Mpc < 0.1 we find that the power spectrum is featureless and close to scale-invariant. On investigating the low quadrupole observed by MAP we find that a model with a significantly lower fluctuation amplitude on large scales is preferred. We also extend the analysis to examine other cosmological assumptions. Throughout we calculate the effect of freedom in the primordial power spectrum shape on the robustness of cosmological parameter estimates.
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