Looking for non-Gaussianity in all the right places: A new basis for non-separable bispectra

TL;DR

This paper introduces a spline basis for efficiently approximating complex, oscillatory non-Gaussian bispectra in inflationary cosmology, improving template matching for CMB data analysis.

Contribution

It proposes a localized spline basis that is nearly orthogonal, offering better fits to non-separable bispectra than existing polynomial or Fourier bases.

Findings

Spline basis provides higher cosine similarity with true bispectra.

Spline basis is easy to implement and extend to many modes.

Improves computational efficiency in analyzing non-Gaussian features.

Abstract

Non-Gaussianity in the distribution of inflationary perturbations, measurable in statistics of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) and large scale structure fluctuations, can be used to probe non-trivial initial quantum states for these perturbations. The bispectrum shapes predicted for generic non-Bunch-Davies initial states are non-factorizable ("non-separable") and are highly oscillatory functions of the three constituent wavenumbers. This can make the computation of CMB bispectra, in particular, computationally intractable. To efficiently compare with CMB data one needs to construct a separable template that has a significant similarity with the actual shape in momentum space. In this paper we consider a variety of inflationary scenarios, with different non-standard initial conditions, and how best to construct viable template matches. In addition to implementing commonly used separable polynomial and Fourier bases, we introduce a basis of localized piecewise spline functions. The spline basis is naturally nearly orthogonal, making it easy to implement and to extend to many modes. We show that, in comparison to existing techniques, the spline basis can provide better fits to the true bispectrum, as measured by the cosine between shapes, for sectors of the theory space of general initial states. As such, it offers a useful approach to investigate non-trivial features generated by fundamental properties of the inflationary Universe.