English

Non-Gaussianities in two-field inflation

Astrophysics 2009-11-11 v3 High Energy Physics - Phenomenology

Abstract

We study the bispectrum of the curvature perturbation on uniform energy density hypersurfaces in models of inflation with two scalar fields evolving simultaneously. In the case of a separable potential, it is possible to compute the curvature perturbation up to second order in the perturbations, generated on large scales due to the presence of non-adiabatic perturbations, by employing the δN\delta N-formalism, in the slow-roll approximation. In this case, we provide an analytic formula for the nonlinear parameter fNLf_{NL}. We apply this formula to double inflation with two massive fields, showing that it does not generate significant non-Gaussianity; the nonlinear parameter at the end of inflation is slow-roll suppressed. Finally, we develop a numerical method for generic two-field models of inflation, which allows us to go beyond the slow-roll approximation and confirms our analytic results for double inflation.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.astro-ph/0603799,
  title  = {Non-Gaussianities in two-field inflation},
  author = {Filippo Vernizzi and David Wands},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:astro-ph/0603799},
  year   = {2009}
}

Comments

29 pages, 6 figures. v2, comparison with previous estimates. v3, JCAP version; Revisions based on Referee's comment, corrected typos, added few eqs and refs, conclusions unchanged

R2 v1 2026-07-22T09:05:58.739Z