CMB spectral distortions in generic two-field models

Abstract

We investigate the CMB $\mu$ distortion in models where two uncorrelated sources contribute to primordial perturbations. We parameterise each source by an amplitude, tilt, running and running of the running. We perform a detailed analysis of the distribution signal as function of the model parameters, highlighting the differences compared to single-source models. As a specific example, we also investigate the mixed inflaton-curvaton scenario. We find that the $\mu$ distortion could efficiently break degeneracies of curvaton parameters especially when combined with future sensitivity of probing the tensor-to-scalar ratio $r$. For example, assuming bounds $\mu <0.5\times 10^{-8}$ and $r<0.01$, the curvaton contribution should either vanish or the curvaton should dominate primordial perturbations and its slow-roll parameter ${\eta }_{\chi }$ is constrained to the interval $-0.007<{\eta }_{\chi }<0.045$.

Comments: 15 pages, 6 figures. v2: published version, minor changes