The Gelaton Scenario: Equilateral non-Gaussianity from multi-field dynamics

The distinctive features of single field inflationary models with non-minimal kinetic terms, like Dirac-Born-Infeld and k-inflation, can be captured by more familiar multiple field inflationary systems of the type that typically arise in low energy supergravity models. At least one heavy field, which we call the gelaton, has an effective potential which depends on the kinetic energy of the inflaton. Integrating out the gelaton gives rise to an effectively single field system for which the speed of sound for the adiabatic fluctuations is reduced, generating potentially observable equilateral non-Gaussianity, while causing negligible isocurvature fluctuations. This mechanism is only active if there is a relatively tight coupling between the gelaton and the inflaton, and this puts an upper limit on the mass of the gelaton for which the inflaton-gelaton system remains weakly coupled. This approach gives a UV-completable framework for describing large classes of k-inflationary behavior.Comment: v3: 5 pages, very minor changes, matches version published in PR

Cosmological Stability Bound in Massive Gravity and Bigravity

We give a simple derivation of a cosmological bound on the graviton mass for spatially flat FRW solutions in massive gravity with an FRW reference metric and for bigravity theories. This bound comes from the requirement that the kinetic term of the helicity zero mode of the graviton is positive definite. The bound is dependent only on the parameters in the massive gravity potential and the Hubble expansion rate for the two metrics. We derive the decoupling limit of bigravity and FRW massive gravity, and use this to give an independent derivation of the cosmological bound. We recover our previous results that the tension between satisfying the Friedmann equation and the cosmological bound is sufficient to rule out all observationally relevant FRW solutions for massive gravity with an FRW reference metric. In contrast, in bigravity this tension is resolved due to different nature of the Vainshtein mechanism. We find that in bigravity theories there exists an FRW solution with late time self-acceleration for which the kinetic terms for the helicity-2, helicity-1 and helicity-0 are generically nonzero and positive making this a compelling candidate for a model of cosmic acceleration. We confirm that the generalized bound is saturated for the candidate partially massless (bi)gravity theories but the existence of helicity-1/helicity-0 interactions implies the absence of the conjectured partially massless symmetry for both massive gravity and bigravity.Comment: 40 pages, typos corrected, references added. Version matching the one published in JCA