CAN DOPPLER PEAKS DISCRIMINATE AMONG INFLATIONARY MODELS AND TOPOLOGICAL DEFECT SCENARIOS

Doppler peaks in the cosmic microwave background may allow us to disti nguish among the two classes of theories-inflationary models and topol ogical defect scenarios-which attempt to explain the origin of structu re formation in the universe. We consider density perturbations seeded by global textures in a universe dominated by cold dark matter. We ca lculate the height and the position of the primary peak and conclude a different signature than the one obtained if the initial perturbation s were due to the amplification of quantum fluctuations of a scalar fi eld during a generic inflationary era. We believe that our analysis ho lds for all kinds of global defects and general global scalar fields. We then question the validity of the temporal coherence of the sources , assumed in the texture models. We finally discuss the temporal coher ence of cosmic string sources, through correlations of the energy and momentum in an evolving cosmic string network in Minkowski space.