Origin of ultra-light fields during inflation and their suppressed non-Gaussianity

DOI10.1088/1475-7516/2020/10/018zbMATH Open1494.83026arXiv1908.06956OpenAlexW3092045944WikidataQ125910700 ScholiaQ125910700MaRDI QIDQ5070974FDOQ5070974

Authors: A. Achucarro, Gonzalo A. Palma, Dong-Gang Wang, Yvette Welling 

Publication date: 14 April 2022

Published in: Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics (Search for Journal in Brave)

Abstract: We study the structure of multi-field inflation models where the primordial curvature perturbation is able to vigorously interact with an ultra-light isocurvature field -- a massless fluctuation orthogonal to the background inflationary trajectory in field space. We identify a class of inflationary models where ultra-light fields can emerge as a consequence of an underlying "scaling transformation" that rescales the entire system's action and keeps the classical equations of motion invariant. This scaling invariance ensures the existence of an ultra-light fluctuation that freezes after horizon crossing. If the inflationary trajectory is misaligned with respect to the scaling symmetry direction, then the isocurvature field is proportional to this ultra-light field, and becomes massless. In addition, we find that even if the isocurvature field interacts strongly with the curvature perturbation --transferring its own statistics to the curvature perturbation-- it is unable to induce large non-Gaussianity. The reason is simply that the same mechanism ensuring a suppressed mass for the isocurvature field is also responsible for suppressing its self-interactions. As a result, in models with light isocurvature fields the bispectrum is generally expected to be slow-roll suppressed, but with a squeezed limit that differs from Maldacena's consistency relation.

Full work available at URL: https://arxiv.org/abs/1908.06956

zbMATH Keywords

non-Gaussianityinflationcosmological perturbation theory

Mathematics Subject Classification ID

Perturbations in context of PDEs (35B20) Methods of global Riemannian geometry, including PDE methods; curvature restrictions (53C21) Relativistic cosmology (83F05) Set functions and measures and integrals in infinite-dimensional spaces (Wiener measure, Gaussian measure, etc.) (28C20) Geometrodynamics and the holographic principle (83E05)

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Cited In (4)

• On the inflationary massive field with a curved field manifold
• Title not available (Why is that?)
• Bootstrapping multi-field inflation: non-Gaussianities from light scalars revisited
• Mild non-Gaussianities under perturbative control from rapid-turn inflation models

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