Related papers: Cosmological Collider Physics and the Curvaton
Primordial non-Gaussianity generated by additional fields during inflation offers a compelling observational target. Heavy fields imprint characteristic oscillatory signals in non-Gaussian correlation functions of the inflaton, a process…
Features in the inflationary landscape can inject extra energies to inflation models and produce on-shell particles with masses much larger than the Hubble scale of inflation. This possibility extends the energy reach of the program of…
Massive fields during inflation provide an interesting opportunity to test new physics at very high energy scales. Meanwhile in fundamental realizations, the inflationary field space typically has a curved geometry, which may leave…
We study the imprint of new particles on the primordial cosmological fluctuations. New particles with masses comparable to the Hubble scale produce a distinctive signature on the non-gaussianities. This feature arises in the squeezed limit…
Curvatons are light (compared to the Hubble scale during inflation) spectator fields during inflation that potentially contribute to adiabatic curvature perturbations post-inflation. They can alter CMB observables such as the spectral index…
Since a positive future detection of non-linearity in the cosmic microwave background anisotropy pattern might allow to descriminate among different mechanisms giving rise to cosmological adiabatic perturbations, we study the evolution of…
Signatures of heavy particles during inflation are exponentially suppressed by the Boltzmann factor when the masses are far above the Hubble scale. In more realistic scenarios, however, scale-dependent features may change this conventional…
Single field inflationary models predict nearly Gaussian initial conditions and hence a detection of non-Gaussianity would be a signature of the more complex inflationary scenarios. In this paper we study the effect on the cosmic microwave…
The cosmological curvature perturbation may be generated when some `curvaton' field, different from the inflaton, oscillates in a background of unperturbed radiation. In its simplest form the curvaton paradigm requires the Hubble parameter…
In this paper we consider how non-Gaussianity of the primordial density perturbation and the amplitude of gravitational waves from inflation can be used to determine parameters of the curvaton scenario for the origin of structure. We show…
Supersymmetry plays a fundamental role in the radiative stability of many inflationary models. Spontaneous breaking of the symmetry inevitably leads to fields with masses of order the Hubble scale during inflation. When these fields couple…
Cosmological collider signals of primordial non-Gaussianity arise at tree level when an extra scalar has Hubble mass during inflation. We critically review the formalism finding that a large class of inflationary theories, based on…
The scale--independence of the primordial curvature perturbation suggests that it comes from the vacuum fluctuation during inflation of a light scalar field. This field may be the inflaton, or a different `curvaton' field. The observation…
A recent variant of the inflationary paradigm is that the ``primordial'' curvature perturbations come from quantum fluctuations of a scalar field, subdominant and effectively massless during inflation, called the ``curvaton'', instead of…
The curvaton scenario for the generation of the cosmological curvature perturbation on large scales represents an alternative to the standard slow-roll scenario of inflation in which the observed density perturbations are due to…
This contribution gives an overview on primordial non-Gaussianities from a theoretical perspective. After presenting a general formalism to describe nonlinear cosmological perturbations, several classes of models, illustrated with examples,…
Cosmic inflation provides a mechanism for generating the early density perturbations that seeded the large-scale structures we see today. Primordial non-Gaussianity is among the most promising of few observational tests of physics at this…
We demonstrate that in the presence of a light scalar spectator field, vacuum transitions taking place during inflation can produce large, potentially detectable non-Gaussian signatures in the primordial curvature perturbation. Such…
The determination of the inflationary energy scale represents one of the first step towards the understanding of the early Universe physics. The (very mild) non-Gaussian signals that arise from any inflation model carry information about…
The inflationary universe can be viewed as a "Cosmological Collider" with energy of Hubble scale, producing very massive particles and recording their characteristic signals in primordial non-Gaussianities. To utilize this collider to…