Reconstruction of the primordial power spectra with Planck and BICEP2 data

• Published in: Physical Review D
• Main Authors: Hu, B, Hu, JW, Guo, ZK, Cai, RG, Hu, B (reprint author), Leiden Univ, Inst Lorentz Theoret Phys, NL-2333 CA Leiden, Netherlands.
• Format: Report
• Language: English
• Published: 2014
• Subjects: Microwave Background Anisotropies; South-pole Telescope; Damping Tail; Wmap; Physics; South Pole; South pole
• Online Access: http://ir.itp.ac.cn/handle/311006/15701; https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevD.90.023544

By using the cubic spline interpolation method, we reconstruct the shape of the primordial scalar and tensor power spectra from the recently released Planck temperature and BICEP2 polarization cosmic microwave background data. We find that the vanishing scalar index running (dn(s)= d ln k) model is strongly disfavored at more than 3 sigma confidence level on the k = 0.0002 Mpc(-1) scale. Furthermore, the power-law parametrization gives a blue-tilt tensor spectrum, no matter using only the first five bandpowers n(t) = 1.20(-0.64)(+0.56) (95% C.L.) or the full nine bandpowers nt 1.24(-0.58)(+0.51) (95% C.L.) of BICEP2 data sets. Unlike the large tensor-to-scalar ratio value (r similar to 0.20) under the scale-invariant tensor spectrum assumption, our interpolation approach gives r(0.002) < 0.060 (95% C.L.) by using the first five bandpowers of BICEP2 data. After comparing the results with/without BICEP2 data, we find that Planck temperature with small tensor amplitude signals and BICEP2 polarization data with large tensor amplitude signals dominate the tensor spectrum reconstruction on the large and small scales, respectively. Hence, the resulting blue tensor tilt actually reflects the tension between Planck and BICEP2 data.