Evidence against or for topological defects in the BOOMERanG data? art. no. 021301

The recently released BOOMERanG data were taken as "contradicting topological defect predictions." We show that such a statement is partly misleading, Indeed, the presence of a series of acoustic peaks is perfectly compatible with a non-negligible topological defect contribution. In such a mixed perturbation model (inflation and topological defects) for the source of primordial fluctuations, the natural prediction is a slightly lower amplitude for the Doppler peaks, a feature shared by many other purely inflationary models. Thus, for the moment, it seems difficult to rule out these models with the current data.