Oscillations in the inflaton potential: Complete numerical treatment and
  comparison with the recent and forthcoming CMB datasets
  Amongst the multitude of inflationary models currently available, models that
lead to features in the primordial scalar spectrum are drawing increasing
attention, since certain features have been found to provide a better fit to
the CMB data than the conventional, nearly scale invariant, primordial
spectrum. In this work, we carry out a complete numerical analysis of two
models that lead to oscillations over all scales in the scalar power spectrum.
We consider the model described by a quadratic potential which is superposed by
a sinusoidal modulation and the recently popular axion monodromy model. Since
the oscillations continue even on to arc minute scales, in addition to the WMAP
data, we also compare the models with the small scale data from ACT. Though,
both the models, broadly, result in oscillations in the spectrum,
interestingly, we find that, while the monodromy model leads to a considerably
better fit to the data in comparison to the standard power law spectrum, the
quadratic potential superposed with a sinusoidal modulation does not improve
the fit to a similar extent. We also carry out forecasting of the parameters
using simulated Planck data for both the models. We show that the Planck mock
data performs better in constraining the model parameters as compared to the
presently available CMB datasets.
