2023/06/22 by Jackie Lodman, Lodman, Jackie, Qianshu Lu +3 · 2 citations
Earth and Planetary Sciences · Physics and Astronomy · #Black Holes and Theoretical Physics #Cosmology and Gravitation Theories #Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics (astro-ph.CO) #FOS: Physical sciences #Geophysics and Gravity Measurements #High Energy Physics - Phenomenology (hep-ph)
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2306.13128
openalex publication_date 2023/06/22 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/01
Curvatons are light (compared to the Hubble scale during inflation) spectator fields during inflation that potentially contribute to adiabatic curvature perturbations post-inflation. They can alter CMB observables such as the spectral index ns, the tensor-to-scalar ratio r, and the local non-Gaussianity f\rm NL\rm (loc). We systematically explore the observable space of a curvaton with a quadratic potential. We find that when the underlying inflation model does not satisfy the ns and r observational constraints but can be made viable with a significant contribution from what we call a savior curvaton, a large f\rm NL\rm (loc) is inevitable. On the other hand, when the underlying inflation model already satisfies the ns and r observational constraints, so significant curvaton contribution is forbidden, a large f\rm NL\rm (loc) is possible in the exceptional case when the isocurvature fluctuation in the curvaton fluid is much greater than the global curvature fluctuation.