Large Nongaussianity from Nonlocal Inflation

Abstract

We study the possibility of obtaining large nongaussian signatures in the Cosmic Microwave Background in a general class of single-field nonlocal hill-top inflation models. We estimate the nonlinearity parameter f_{NL} which characterizes nongaussianity in such models and show that large nongaussianity is possible. For the recently proposed p-adic inflation model we find that f_{NL} ~ 120 when the string coupling is order unity. We show that large nongaussianity is also possible in a toy model with an action similar to those which arise in string field theory.

27 pages, no figures. Added references and some clarifying remarks