Model-Independent Signatures of New Physics in non-Gaussianity

Abstract

We compute the model-independent contributions to the primordial bispectrum and trispectrum in de Sitter space due to high-energy physics. We do this by coupling a light inflaton to an auxiliary heavy field, and then evaluating correlation functions in the Schwinger-Keldysh "in-in" formalism. The high-energy physics produces corrections parametrized by $H/M$ where $H$ is the scale of inflation and $M$ is the mass of the heavy field. The bispectrum peaks near the elongated shape, but otherwise contains no features. The trispectrum receives no corrections at order $H/M$.

11 pages, 8 figures; v2: corrected trispectrum evaluation

References in corpus (4)

• Observational Signatures and Non-Gaussianities of General Single Field Inflation
• Enhanced Non-Gaussianity from Excited Initial States
• Detection of primordial non-Gaussianity (fNL) in the WMAP 3-year data at above 99.5% confidence
• Extracting New Physics from the CMB