English

Scalar Bispectrum Beyond Slow-Roll in the Unified EFT of Inflation

Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics 2018-07-24 v2 General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology High Energy Physics - Theory

Abstract

We present a complete formulation of the scalar bispectrum in the unified effective field theory (EFT) of inflation, which includes the Horndeski and beyond-Horndeski Gleyzes-Langlois-Piazza-Vernizzi classes, in terms of a set of simple one-dimensional integrals. These generalized slow-roll expressions remain valid even when slow-roll is transiently violated and encompass all configurations of the bispectrum. We show analytically that our expressions explicitly preserve the squeezed-limit consistency relation beyond slow-roll. As an example application of our results, we compute the scalar bispectrum in a model in which potential-driven G-inflation at early times transitions to chaotic inflation at late times, showing that our expressions accurately track the bispectrum when slow-roll is violated and conventional slow-roll approximations fail.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1804.07741,
  title  = {Scalar Bispectrum Beyond Slow-Roll in the Unified EFT of Inflation},
  author = {Samuel Passaglia and Wayne Hu},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1804.07741},
  year   = {2018}
}

Comments

26 pages, 5 figures; matches published version