15 research outputs found
Running Spectral Index from Inflation with Modulations
We argue that a large negative running spectral index, if confirmed, might
suggest that there are abundant structures in the inflaton potential, which
result in a fairly large (both positive and negative) running of the spectral
index at all scales. It is shown that the center value of the running spectral
index suggested by the recent CMB data can be easily explained by an inflaton
potential with superimposed periodic oscillations. In contrast to cases with
constant running, the perturbation spectrum is enhanced at small scales, due to
the repeated modulations. We mention that such features at small scales may be
seen by 21 cm observations in the future.Comment: 7 pages, 6 figures, v2: published in JCA
A geometric description of the non-Gaussianity generated at the end of multi-field inflation
In this paper we mainly focus on the curvature perturbation generated at the
end of multi-field inflation, such as the multi-brid inflation. Since the
curvature perturbation is produced on the super-horizon scale, the bispectrum
and trispectrum have a local shape. The size of bispectrum is measured by
and the trispectrum is characterized by two parameters and
. For simplicity, the trajectory of inflaton is assumed to be a
straight line in the field space and then the entropic perturbations do not
contribute to the curvature perturbation during inflation. As long as the
background inflaton path is not orthogonal to the hyper-surface for inflation
to end, the entropic perturbation can make a contribution to the curvature
perturbation at the end of inflation and a large local-type non-Gaussiantiy is
expected. An interesting thing is that the non-Gaussianity parameters are
completely determined by the geometric properties of the hyper-surface of the
end of inflation. For example, is proportional to the curvature of the
curve on this hyper-surface along the adiabatic direction and is
related to the change of the curvature radius per unit arc-length of this
curve. Both and can be positive or negative respectively, but
must be positive and not less than .Comment: 19 pages, 4 figures; refs added; a correction to \tau_{NL} for
n-field inflation added, version accepted for publication in JCA
Features of heavy physics in the CMB power spectrum
The computation of the primordial power spectrum in multi-field inflation
models requires us to correctly account for all relevant interactions between
adiabatic and non-adiabatic modes around and after horizon crossing. One
specific complication arises from derivative interactions induced by the
curvilinear trajectory of the inflaton in a multi-dimensional field space. In
this work we compute the power spectrum in general multi-field models and show
that certain inflaton trajectories may lead to observationally significant
imprints of `heavy' physics in the primordial power spectrum if the inflaton
trajectory turns, that is, traverses a bend, sufficiently fast (without
interrupting slow roll), even in cases where the normal modes have masses
approaching the cutoff of our theory. We emphasise that turning is defined with
respect to the geodesics of the sigma model metric, irrespective of whether
this is canonical or non-trivial. The imprints generically take the form of
damped superimposed oscillations on the power spectrum. In the particular case
of two-field models, if one of the fields is sufficiently massive compared to
the scale of inflation, we are able to compute an effective low energy theory
for the adiabatic mode encapsulating certain relevant operators of the full
multi-field dynamics. As expected, a particular characteristic of this
effective theory is a modified speed of sound for the adiabatic mode which is a
functional of the background inflaton trajectory and the turns traversed during
inflation. Hence in addition, we expect non-Gaussian signatures directly
related to the features imprinted in the power spectrum.Comment: 41 pages, 6 figures, references updated, minor modifications. Version
to appear in JCAP. v4: Equations (4.28) and (4.30) and Figures 5 and 6
correcte
Black hole formation from collisions of cosmic fundamental strings
We develop the general formalism for joining, splitting and interconnection of closed and open strings. As an application, we study examples of fundamental cosmic string collisions leading to gravitational collapse. We find that the interconnection of two strings of equal and opposite maximal angular momentum and arbitrarily large mass generically leads to the formation of black holes, provided their relative velocity is small enough