Constraining holographic inflation with WMAP

In a class of recently proposed models, the early universe is strongly coupled and described holography by a three-dimensional, weakly coupled, super-renormalizable quantum field theory. This scenario leads to a power spectrum of scalar perturbations that differs from the usual empirical ACDM form and the predictors of generic models of single field, slow roll inflation. This spectrum is characterized by two parameters: an amplitude, and a parameter g related to the coupling constant of the dual theory. We estimate these for both the holographic model and standard ACDM and find that their difference is not significant, although ACDM provides a somewhat better fit to the data. However, it appears that Planck will permit a definitive test of this holographic scenario.