The Spectral Slope in the Cold Dark Matter Cosmogony

In a recent paper, we suggested that the density fluctuation spectra arising from power-law (or extended) inflation, which are tilted with respect to the Harrison–Zel’dovich spectrum, may provide an explanation for the excess large scale clustering seen in galaxy surveys such as the APM survey. In the light of the new results from COBE, we examine in detail here cold dark matter cosmogonies based on inflationary models predicting power-law spectra. Along with power-law and extended inflation, this class includes natural inflation. The latter is of interest because, unlike the first two, it produces a power-law spectrum without significant gravitational wave production. We examine a range of phenomena, including large angle microwave background fluctuations, clustering in the galaxy distribution, bulk peculiar velocity flows, the formation of high redshift quasars and the epoch of structure formation. Of the three models, only natural inflation seems capable of explaining the large scale clustering of optical galaxies. Such a model, though at best marginal even at present, has some advantages over standard CDM and on most grounds appears to perform at least as well. Power-law inflation’s primary interest may ultimately only be in permitting a larger bias parameter than standard CDM; it appears unable to explain excess clustering. Most models of extended inflation are ruled out at a high confidence level. E-mail addresses: arl @ uk.ac.sussex.starlink ; d.lyth @ uk.ac.lancaster