English

Model-Independent Signatures of New Physics in non-Gaussianity

High Energy Physics - Theory 2013-01-22 v2 Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics

Abstract

We compute the model-independent contributions to the primordial bispectrum and trispectrum in de Sitter space due to high-energy physics. We do this by coupling a light inflaton to an auxiliary heavy field, and then evaluating correlation functions in the Schwinger-Keldysh "in-in" formalism. The high-energy physics produces corrections parametrized by H/MH/M where HH is the scale of inflation and MM is the mass of the heavy field. The bispectrum peaks near the elongated shape, but otherwise contains no features. The trispectrum receives no corrections at order H/MH/M.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1202.0604,
  title  = {Model-Independent Signatures of New Physics in non-Gaussianity},
  author = {Mark G. Jackson and Koenraad Schalm},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1202.0604},
  year   = {2013}
}

Comments

11 pages, 8 figures; v2: corrected trispectrum evaluation