Reconstructing the Inflationary Landscape with Cosmological Data

TL;DR

This paper proposes a method to reconstruct the inflationary landscape potential by analyzing non-Gaussian features in cosmological data, linking primordial fluctuations to the shape of the potential.

Contribution

It introduces a novel approach to infer the inflationary landscape potential from non-Gaussianity patterns in CMB data, which cannot be captured by traditional correlation functions.

Findings

Derived an expression for the probability distribution function related to the landscape potential

Showed how to invert the distribution to reconstruct the potential from cosmological data

Current data do not show significant tomographic non-Gaussianity, but future surveys may improve constraints.

Abstract

We show that the shape of the inflationary landscape potential may be constrained by analyzing cosmological data. The quantum fluctuations of fields orthogonal to the inflationary trajectory may have probed the structure of the local landscape potential, inducing non-Gaussianity (NG) in the primordial distribution of the curvature perturbations responsible for the cosmic microwave background (CMB) anisotropies and our Universe's large-scale structure. The resulting type of NG (tomographic NG) is determined by the shape of the landscape potential, and it cannot be fully characterized by 3- or 4-point correlation functions. Here we deduce an expression for the profile of this probability distribution function in terms of the landscape potential, and we show how this can be inverted in order to reconstruct the potential with the help of CMB observations. While current observations do not allow us to infer a significant level of tomographic NG, future surveys may improve the possibility of constraining this class of primordial signatures.