Vacuum arbitrariness and the Hubble tension

Abstract

We show that the energy density of the superhorizon modes released in a non-Bunch-Davies vacuum can be arbitrarily large during inflation and it decreases like ln(a)/a^4 in the subsequent radiation dominated era. This may constitute a dark radiation component which can sufficiently alter the early cosmological evolution to alleviate the Hubble tension.

Comments: 18 pages, 2 figures, v2: references added