Primordial Non-Gaussianity

Abstract

Our current understanding of the Universe is established through the pristine measurements of structure in the cosmic microwave background (CMB) and the distribution and shapes of galaxies tracing the large scale structure (LSS) of the Universe. One key ingredient that underlies cosmological observables is that the field that sources the observed structure is assumed to be initially Gaussian with high precision. Nevertheless, a minimal deviation from Gaussianityis perhaps the most robust theoretical prediction of models that explain the observed Universe; itis necessarily present even in the simplest scenarios. In addition, most inflationary models produce far higher levels of non-Gaussianity. Since non-Gaussianity directly probes the dynamics in the early Universe, a detection would present a monumental discovery in cosmology, providing clues about physics at energy scales as high as the GUT scale.

5 pages + references; Submitted to the Astro2020 call for science white papers. This version: fixed author list

Cited by in corpus (24)

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• Amplification of Primordial Perturbations from the Rise or Fall of the Inflaton
• Phase Information in Cosmological Collider Signals
• Probing Leptogenesis with the Cosmological Collider
• Precision Calculation of Inflation Correlators at One Loop
• Primordial Gravitational Waves from Galaxy Intrinsic Alignments
• The Persistence of Large Scale Structures I: Primordial non-Gaussianity
• Field Level Neural Network Emulator for Cosmological N-body Simulations
• Beware of Fake $\nu$s: The Effect of Massive Neutrinos on the Nonlinear Evolution of Cosmic Structure
• Constraints on anisotropic primordial non-Gaussianity from intrinsic alignments of SDSS-III BOSS galaxies
• Coupling parsec and gigaparsec scales: primordial non-Gaussianity with multi-tracer intensity mapping
• Non-Gaussianities in Collider Energy Flux
• The Dark Ages' 21-cm Trispectrum
• Density reconstruction from biased tracers and its application to primordial non-Gaussianity
• Non-Gaussianities in models of inflation with large and negative entropic masses
• The position-dependent matter density probability distribution function
• The power spectrum of galaxies from large to small scales: a line-intensity mapping perspective
• Perspectives on fundamental cosmology from Low Earth Orbit and the Moon
• Effects of boosting on extragalactic components: methods and statistical studies
• Pair Counting without Binning -- A New Approach to Correlation Functions in Clustering Statistics
• Ringing Non-Gaussianity from inflation with a step in the second derivative of the potential
• An Optimal In-Situ Multipole Algorithm for the Isotropic Three-Point Correlation Functions
• A Tail of Eternal Inflation