Constraints on the birth of the universe and origin of cosmic dark flow
  We summarize three recent efforts to constrain the first few moments of
cosmic creation before and during the epoch of inflation. We consider two means
to explain a slight dip in the power spectrum of the cosmic microwave
background for multipoles in the range of $\ell= 10-30$ from both the {\it
Planck} and {\it WMAP} data. We show that such a dip could be the result of
resonant creation of a massive particle that couples to the inflaton field. For
best-fit models, the epoch of resonant particle creation reenters the horizon
at wave numbers of $k_* \sim 0.00011 \pm 0.0004 $ ($h$ Mpc$^{-1}$). The
amplitude and location of these features correspond to the creation of a number
of degenerate fermion species of mass $\sim 15/\lambda^{3/2} $ $m_{pl}$ during
inflation where $\lambda$ is the coupling constant between the inflaton field
and the created fermion species. Alternatively, one can explain the existence
of such a dip as due to a jump in the inflation generating potential. We show
that such a jump can also resolve the excessively large dark flow predicted
from the M-theory landscape. Finally, we summarize our efforts to quantify
constraints on the cosmic dark flow from a new analysis of the Type Ia
supernova distance-redshift relation.
