Non-Gaussianity as a signature of thermal initial condition of inflation

Abstract

We study non-Gaussianities in the primordial perturbations in single field inflation where there is radiation era prior to inflation. Inflation takes place when the energy density of radiation drops below the value of the potential of a coherent scalar field. We compute the thermal average of the two, three and four point correlation functions of inflaton fluctuations. The three point function is proportional to the slow roll parameters and there is an amplification in $f_{NL}$ by a factor of 65 to 90 due to the contribution of the thermal bath, and we conclude that the bispectrum is in the range of detectability with the 21-cm anisotropy measurements. The four point function on the other hand appears in this case due to the thermal averaging and the fact that thermal averaging of four-point correlation is not the same as the square of the thermal averaging of the two-point function. Due to this fact ${\tau }_{NL}$ is not proportional to the slow-roll parameters and can be as large as -42. The non-Gaussianities in the four point correlation of the order 10 can also be detected by 21-cm background observations. We conclude that a signature of thermal inflatons is a large trispectrum non-Gaussianity compared to the bispectrum non-Gaussianity.

Comments: 17 RevTeX4 pages, 2 figures, One paragraph added in Introduction, No further changes made, Accepted for publication in PRD