Mimicking features in alternatives to inflation with interacting spectator fields

Abstract

It has been argued that oscillatory features from spectator fields in the primordial power spectrum could be a probe of alternatives to inflation. In this work, we soften this claim by showing that the frequency and amplitude dependence of the patterns appearing in these scenarios could be mimicked by field interactions during inflation. The degeneracy of the frequency holds for the n-point correlation functions, while the degeneracy of the amplitude is broken at the level of non-gaussianities. Keywords: Inflation, Early universe, Primordial features, Primordial standard clocks, Alternatives to inflation