A Minimal Explanation of the Primordial Cosmological Perturbations

Abstract

We outline a new explanation for the primordial density perturbations in cosmology. Dimension zero fields are a minimal addition to the Standard Model of particle physics: if the Higgs doublet is emergent, they cancel the vacuum energy and both Weyl anomalies without introducing any new particles. Furthermore, the cancellation explains why there are three generations of elementary particles, including RH neutrinos. We show how quantum zero point fluctuations of dimension zero fields seed nearly scale-invariant, Gaussian, adiabatic density perturbations. We calculate the amplitude of the primordial perturbations in terms of Standard Model couplings and find a result consistent with large scale observations. Subject to two key theoretical assumptions, both the amplitude and the tilt we calculate agree with the observed values, with no free parameters.