Tests for primordial non-Gaussianity
Abstract
We investigate the relative sensitivities of several tests for deviations from Gaussianity in the primordial distribution of density perturbations. We consider models for non-Gaussianity that mimic that which comes from inflation as well as that which comes from topological defects. The tests we consider involve the cosmic microwave background (CMB), large-scale structure (LSS), high-redshift galaxies, and the abundances and properties of clusters. We find that the CMB is superior at finding non-Gaussianity in the primordial gravitational potential (as inflation would produce), while observations of high-redshift galaxies are much better suited to find non-Gaussianity that resembles that expected from topological defects. We derive a simple expression that relates the abundance of high-redshift objects in non-Gaussian models to the primordial skewness.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.astro-ph/0011180,
title = {Tests for primordial non-Gaussianity},
author = {Licia Verde and Raul Jimenez and Marc Kamionkowski and Sabino Matarrese},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:astro-ph/0011180},
year = {2009}
}
Comments
6 pages, 2 figures, MNRAS in press (minor changes to match the accepted version)