English

Using Large Scale Structure to test Multifield Inflation

Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics 2015-03-05 v2

Abstract

Primordial non-Gaussianity of local type is known to produce a scale-dependent contribution to the galaxy bias. Several classes of multi-field inflationary models predict non-Gaussian bias which is stochastic, in the sense that dark matter and halos don't trace each other perfectly on large scales. In this work, we forecast the ability of next-generation Large Scale Structure surveys to constrain common types of primordial non-Gaussianity like fNLf_{NL}, gNLg_{NL} and τNL\tau_{NL} using halo bias, including stochastic contributions. We provide fitting functions for statistical errors on these parameters which can be used for rapid forecasting or survey optimization. A next-generation survey with volume V=25h3V = 25 h^{-3}Gpc3^3, median redshift z=0.7z = 0.7 and mean bias bg=2.5b_g = 2.5, can achieve σ(fNL)=6\sigma(f_{NL}) = 6, σ(gNL)=105\sigma(g_{NL}) = 10^5 and σ(τNL)=103\sigma(\tau_{NL}) = 10^3 if no mass information is available. If halo masses are available, we show that optimally weighting the halo field in order to reduce sample variance can achieve σ(fNL)=1.5\sigma(f_{NL}) = 1.5, σ(gNL)=104\sigma(g_{NL}) = 10^4 and σ(τNL)=100\sigma(\tau_{NL}) = 100 if halos with mass down to Mmin=1011M_{min} = 10^{11} h1Mh^{-1} M_\odot are resolved, outperforming Planck by a factor of 4 on fNLf_{NL} and nearly an order of magnitude on gNLg_{NL} and τNL\tau_{NL}. Finally, we study the effect of photometric redshift errors and discuss degeneracies between different non-Gaussian parameters, as well as the impact of marginalizing Gaussian bias and shot noise.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1408.3126,
  title  = {Using Large Scale Structure to test Multifield Inflation},
  author = {Simone Ferraro and Kendrick M. Smith},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1408.3126},
  year   = {2015}
}

Comments

17 pages, 6 figures. Comments are welcome. Typo fixed

R2 v1 2026-06-22T05:28:17.674Z