Primordial trispectra and CMB spectral distortions

Abstract

We study the $TT\mu$ bispectrum, generated by correlations between Cosmic Microwave Background temperature (T) anisotropies and chemical potential ($\mu$) distortions, and we analyze its dependence on primordial local trispectrum parameters $g_{\mathrm{NL}}$ and ${\tau }_{\mathrm{NL}}$. We cross-check our results by comparing the full bispectrum calculation with the expectations from a general physical argument, based on predicting the shape of $\mu$-T correlations from the couplings between short and long perturbation modes induced by primordial non-Gaussianity. We show that $both$ $g_{\mathrm{NL}}$ and ${\tau }_{\mathrm{NL}}$-parts of the primordial trispectrum source a non-vanishing $TT\mu$ signal, contrary to the $\mu \mu$ auto-correlation function, which is sensitive only to the ${\tau }_{\mathrm{NL}}$-component. A simple Fisher matrix-based forecast shows that a futuristic, cosmic-variance dominated experiment could in principle detect $g_{\mathrm{NL}}\sim 0.4$ and ${\tau }_{\mathrm{NL}}\sim 40$ using $TT\mu$.

Comments: 21 pages, 4 figures. Accepted for publication in JCAP