Productive Interactions: heavy particles and non-Gaussianity

TL;DR

This paper investigates how heavy particles produced during inflation can generate detectable oscillatory features in the primordial power spectrum and non-Gaussianity, offering new insights into UV physics and effective field theory constraints.

Contribution

It introduces a novel mechanism where non-adiabatic production of heavy particles affects primordial fluctuations, expanding the understanding of non-Gaussian signals beyond existing models.

Findings

Heavy particles can produce observable non-Gaussian features.

Amplitude of bispectrum can surpass Resonant Non-Gaussianity.

Distinct oscillatory shape motivated by Planck data analysis.

Abstract

We analyze the shape and amplitude of oscillatory features in the primordial power spectrum and non-Gaussianity induced by periodic production of heavy degrees of freedom coupled to the inflaton $\phi$. We find that non-adiabatic production of particles can contribute effects which are detectable or constrainable using cosmological data even if their time-dependent masses are always heavier than the scale $\dot \phi^{1/2}$, much larger than the Hubble scale. This provides a new role for UV completion, consistent with the criteria from effective field theory for when heavy fields cannot be integrated out. This analysis is motivated in part by the structure of axion monodromy, and leads to an additional oscillatory signature in a subset of its parameter space. At the level of a quantum field theory model that we analyze in detail, the effect arises consistently with radiative stability for an interesting window of couplings up to of order $\lesssim 1$. The amplitude of the bispectrum and higher-point functions can be larger than that for Resonant Non-Gaussianity, and its signal/noise may be comparable to that of the corresponding oscillations in the power spectrum (and even somewhat larger within a controlled regime of parameters). Its shape is distinct from previously analyzed templates, but was partly motivated by the oscillatory equilateral searches performed recently by the {\it Planck} collaboration. We also make some general comments about the challenges involved in making a systematic study of primordial non-Gaussianity.