CONSTRAINTS ON PRE-INFLATION COSMOLOGY AND DARK FLOW

Abstract

If the present universe is slightly open then pre-inflation curvature would appear as a cosmic dark-flow component of the CMB dipole moment. We summarize current cosmological constraints on this cosmic dark flow and analyze the possible constraints on parameters characterizing the pre-inflating universe in an inflation model with a present-day very slightly open ΛCDM cosmology. We employ an analytic model to show that for a broad class of inflation-generating effective potentials, the simple requirement that the observed dipole moment represents the pre-inflation curvature as it enters the horizon allows one to set upper and lower limits on the magnitude and wavelength scale of pre-inflation fluctuations in the inflaton field and the curvature parameter of the pre-inflation universe, as a function of the fraction of the total initial energy density in the inflaton field. We estimate that if the current CMB dipole is a universal dark flow (or if it is near the upper limit set by the Planck Collaboration) then the present constraints on ΛCDM cosmological parameters imply rather small curvature Ω k ~ 0:1 for the pre-inflating universe for a broad range of the fraction of the total energy in the inflaton field at the onset of inflation. Such small pre-inflation curvature might be indicative of open-inflation models in which there are two epochs of inflation.