Non-gaussianity from the bispectrum in general multiple field inflation

TL;DR

This paper investigates non-Gaussian features in the bispectrum of multi-field inflation models with general kinetic terms, highlighting how different sound speeds influence the amplitude and shape of non-Gaussianity, with implications for model differentiation.

Contribution

It derives the exact second and third order actions for multi-field inflation with general kinetic terms, analyzing the impact of different sound speeds on non-Gaussianity and providing a way to distinguish models.

Findings

Different sound speeds for adiabatic and entropy perturbations can enhance non-Gaussianity.

Entropy perturbations can have distinct momentum dependence, aiding model discrimination.

In multi-field DBI inflation, entropy contributions only affect amplitude, easing observational constraints.

Abstract

We study the non-gaussianity from the bispectrum in multi-field inflation models with a general kinetic term. The models include the multi-field K-inflation and the multi-field Dirac-Born-Infeld (DBI) inflation as special cases. We find that, in general, the sound speeds for the adiabatic and entropy perturbations are different and they can be smaller than 1. Then the non-gaussianity can be enhanced. The multi-field DBI-inflation is shown to be a special case where both sound speeds are the same due to a special form of the kinetic term. We derive the exact second and third order actions including metric perturbations. In the small sound speed limit and at leading order in the slow-roll expansion, we derive the three point function for the curvature perturbation which depends on both adiabatic and entropy perturbations. The contribution from the entropy perturbations has a different momentum dependence if the sound speed for the entropy perturbations is different from the adiabatic one, which provides a possibility to distinguish the multi-field models from single field models. On the other hand, in the multi-field DBI case, the contribution from the entropy perturbations has the same momentum dependence as the pure adiabatic contributions and it only changes the amplitude of the three point function. This could help to ease the constraints on the DBI-inflation models.