Maciej Kowalczyk

Recent observations of the cosmic microwave background evidence a notable discrepancy between the inflationary scale and the Planck scale predicted by conventional inflationary models, particularly those based on simple chaotic inflation frameworks. In this talk, I will present a proposed resolution to this conflict by introducing a slight modification to the standard general relativity framework, which naturally incorporates a cutoff scale consistent with the observations. This last scale of power suppression 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 of slow-roll inflation. By choosing a vacuum based on an asymptotic diagonalization of the Hamiltonian of the perturbations, leading to a non-oscillatory primordial power spectrum, we will analytically investigate the model. I will conclude with a detailed study of several physically interesting cases.