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Abstract: We investigate the effects of the presence of relic classical superhorizon inhomogeneities during inflation. This superhorizon inhomogeneity appears as a gradient locally and picks out a preferred direction. Quantum fluctuations on this slightly inhomogeneous background are generally statistical anisotropic. We find a quadrupole modification to the ordinary isotropic spectrum. Moreover, this deviation from statistical isotropy is scale-dependent, with a factor. This result implies that the statistical anisotropy mainly appears on large scales, while the spectrum on small scales remains highly isotropic. Moreover, due to this factor, the power on large scales is suppressed. Thus, our model can simultaneously explain the observed anisotropic alignments of the low-ℓ multipoles and their low power. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Recent released WMAP data show a low value of quadrupole in the CMB temperature fluctuations, which confirms the early observations by COBE. In this Letter we consider a model of two inflatons with different masses, V(φ1,φ2)=1/2m12φ12+1/2m12φ12+1/2m22φ22, m1>m2 and study its effects on CMB of suppressing the primordial power spectrum P(k) at small k. Inflation is driven in this model firstly by the heavier inflaton φ1, then the lighter field φ2. But there is no interruption in between. We numerically calculate the scalar and tensor power spectra with mode by mode integrations, then fit the model to WMAP temperature correlations TT and the TE temperature-polarization spectra. Our results show that with m1∼1014 GeV and m2∼1013 GeV, this model solves the problems of flatness, etc. and the CMB quadrupole predicted can be much lower than the standard power-law ΛCDM model. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]