Local non-Gaussianity from inflation

By D. Wands. 2010

143 citations recorded by the source corpus.

The non-Gaussian distribution of primordial perturbations has the potential to reveal the physical processes at work in the very early universe. Local models provide a well-defined class of non-Gaussian distributions that arise naturally from the nonlinear evolution of density perturbations on super-Hubble scales starting from Gaussian field fluctuations during inflation. I describe the δN formalism used to calculate the primordial density perturbation on large scales and then review several models for the origin of local primordial non-Gaussianity, including the curvaton, modulated reheating and ekpyrotic scenarios. I include an appendix with a table of sign conventions used in specific papers.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Nuclear and High Energy Physics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/1b28e22cca816880fb6b3771c890eec52000b96b

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In Astronomy and Astrophysics

1. D. Schneider
2. Will J. Percival
3. Daniel J. Eisenstein
4. J. Tinker
5. J. Brinkmann
6. D. Weinberg
7. M. White
8. F. V. D. Bosch

In Nuclear and High Energy Physics

1. M. White
2. J. Tinker
3. D. Weinberg
4. Daniel J. Eisenstein
5. D. Schneider
6. C. Chuang
7. Will J. Percival
8. J. Brinkmann

Citations in the corpus

• Review of local non-Gaussianity from multi-field inflation (2010, background): “This does not exhaust all of the possible ways of generating a large local non-Gaussianity from inflation, see also the reviews [44–47] and the papers [48, 49].”
• THE SDSS-IV EXTENDED BARYON OSCILLATION SPECTROSCOPIC SURVEY: OVERVIEW AND EARLY DATA (2015, background): “A form of potential non-Gaussianity that arises naturally in many inflationary models (Wands 2010) is the “local” form, with a gravitational potential described by φ = φg + fNL ( φ2g − 〈 φ2g 〉) , (7) where φg is an auxiliary Gaussian field.”
• Inflation, Cosmic Perturbations and Non-Gaussianities (2013, background): “A summary of conventions can be found in [112, 113].”
• The clustering of galaxies in the SDSS-III DR9 Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey: constraints on primordial non-Gaussianity (2012, background): “Alternative inflationary models (e.g., multiple field) predict there to be significant nonGaussian components to the potential (see, e.g., Wands 2010 for a review).”