Impact of the Hubble tension on the r − ns contour

Abstract

The injection of early dark energy (EDE) before the recombination, a possible resolution of the Hubble tension, will not only shift the scalar spectral index ns towards ns=1, but also be likely to tighten the current upper limit on tensor-to-scalar ratio r. In this work, with the latest CMB datasets (Planck PR4, ACT, SPT and BICEP/Keck), as well as BAO and SN, we confirm this result, and discuss its implication on inflation. We also show that if we happen to live with EDE, how the different inflation models currently allowed would be distinguished by planned CMB observations, such as CMB-S4 and LiteBIRD.