In the inflationary scenarios suggested by string theory, the vacuum fluctuations of the electromagnetic field can be amplified by the time evolution of the dilaton background, and can grow large enough to explain both the origin of the cosmic magnetic fields and of the observed CMB anisotropy. The normalization of the perturbation spectrum is fixed, and implies a relation between the perturbation amplitude at the COBE scale and the spectral index n. Working within a generic two-parameter family of backgrounds, a large scale anisotropy ΔT/T≃${10}^{\mathrm{-}5}$ is found to correspond to a spectral index in the range n≃1.11-1.17. © 1995 The American Physical Society.

• Received 8 May 1995

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevD.52.R6651