IMPRINTS OF THE METRICALLY COUPLED DILATON ON DENSITY PERTURBATIONS IN INFLATIONARY COSMOLOGY

Spectra of density perturbations produced during chaotic inflation are calculated, taking both adiabatic and isocurvature modes into account in a class of scalar-tensor theories of gravity in which the dilaton is metrically coupled. Comparing the predicted spectrum of the cosmic microwave background radiation anisotropies with the one observed by t he COBE-DMR we calculate constraints on the parameters of these theori es, which turn out to be stronger by an order-of-magnitude than those obtained from post-Newtonian experiments, (C) 1998 Elsevier Science B. V.