CMB quadrupole suppression. I. Initial conditions of inflationary perturbations

We investigate the issue of initial conditions of curvature and tensor perturbations at the beginning of slow roll inflation and their effect on the power spectra. Renormalizability and small backreaction constrain the high k behavior of the Bogoliubov coefficients that define these initial conditions. We introduce a transfer function D(k) which encodes the effect of generic initial conditions on the power spectra. The constraint from renormalizability and small backreaction entails that D(k)less than or similar to mu(2)/k(2) for large k, implying that observable effects from initial conditions are more prominent in the low multipoles. This behavior affects the CMB quadrupole by the observed amount similar to 10%-20% when mu is of the order of the energy scale of inflation. The effects on high l-multipoles are suppressed by a factor similar to 1/l(2) due to the falloff of D(k) for large wave vectors k. We show that the determination of generic initial conditions for the fluctuations is equivalent to the scattering problem by a potential V(eta) localized just prior to the slow roll stage. Such potential leads to a transfer function D(k) which automatically obeys the renormalizability and small backreaction constraints. We find that an attractive potential V(eta) yields a suppression of the lower CMB multipoles. Both for curvature and tensor modes, the quadrupole suppression depends only on the energy scale of V(eta), and on the time interval where V(eta) is nonzero. A suppression of the quadrupole for curvature perturbations consistent with the data is obtained when the scale of the potential is of the order of k(Q)(2) where k(Q) is the wave vector whose physical wavelength is the Hubble radius today.