Primordial Curvature Fluctuation and Its Non-Gaussianity in Models with Modulated Reheating

Jul, 2008
38 pages
Published in:
  • Phys.Rev.D 78 (2008) 063545
e-Print:

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Abstract: (arXiv)
We investigate non-Gaussianity in the modulated reheating scenario where fluctuations of the decay rate of the inflaton generate adiabatic perturbations, paying particular attention to the non-linearity parameters fNL,τNLf_{\rm NL}, \tau_{\rm NL} and gNLg_{\rm NL} as well as the scalar spectral index and tensor-to-scalar ratio which characterize the nature of the primordial power spectrum. We also take into account the pre-existing adiabatic perturbations produced from the inflaton fluctuations. It has been known that the non-linearity between the curvature perturbations and the fluctuations of the decay rate can yield non-Gaussianity at the level of fNLO(1)f_{\rm NL} \sim \mathcal{O}(1), but we find that the non-linearity between the decay rate and the modulus field which determines the decay rate can generate much greater non-Gaussianity. We also discuss a consistency relation among non-linearity parameters which holds in the scenario and find that the modulated reheating yields a different one from that of the curvaton model. In particular, they both can yield a large positive fNLf_{\rm NL} but with a different sign of gNLg_{\rm NL}. This provides a possibility to discriminate these two competitive models by looking at the sign of gNLg_{\rm NL}. Furthermore, we work on some concrete inflation models and investigate in what cases models predict the spectral index and the tensor-to-scalar ratio allowed by the current data while generating large non-Gaussianity, which may have many implications for model-buildings of the inflationary universe.
  • 98.80.Cq
  • reheating
  • perturbation: adiabatic
  • power spectrum: primordial
  • inflaton: fluctuation
  • curvature: perturbation
  • non-Gaussianity
  • curvaton
  • inflaton: decay rate
  • inflation: chaos