String theory clues for the low–ℓ CMB ?

¹ Department of Physics, Tokyo Metropolitan University Hachioji, Tokyo 192-0397, Japan
² Department of Physics, CERN Theory Division, CH - 1211 Geneva 23, Switzerland (On leave from Scuola Normale Superiore and INFN, Piazza dei Cavalieri 7, 56126 Pisa Italy )

^a e-mail: kitazawa@phys.se.tmu.ac.jp
^b e-mail: sagnotti@sns.it

Published online: 29 May 2015

Abstract

“Brane Supersymmetry Breaking” is a peculiar string–scale mechanism that can unpair Bose and Fermi excitations in orientifold models. It results from the simultaneous presence, in the vacuum, of collections of D-branes and orientifolds that are not mutually BPS, and is closely tied to the scale of string excitations. It also leaves behind, for a mixing of dilaton and internal breathing mode, an exponential potential that is just too steep for a scalar to emerge from the initial singularity while descending it. As a result, in this class of models the scalar can generically bounce off the exponential wall, and this dynamics brings along, in the power spectrum, an infrared depression typically followed by a pre–inflationary peak. We elaborate on a possible link between this type of bounce and the low–ℓ end of the CMB angular power spectrum. For the first 32 multipoles, one can reach a 50% reduction in χ² with respect to the standard ΛCDM setting.