Non-Gaussianity from the hybrid potential
Orani, Stefano (Imperial College London)

I will present a study of the hybrid inflationary potential in a regime\r\nwhere the defect field is light, and more than \r\n60 e-folds of accelerated expansion occur after the symmetry breaking\r\ntransition. Using analytic and numerical techniques,\r\nparameter values are identified within this regime such that \r\nthe statistics of the primordial curvature perturbation are\r\nsignificantly non-Gaussian. Focusing on this range of parameters,\r\nspecific examples which lead to an observationally consistent power\r\nspectrum, and a level of non-Gaussianity \r\nwithin reach of the PLANCK satellite are provided. An interesting\r\nfeature of these examples is that no fine tuning of \r\ninitial conditions is required, in contrast to other two-field models\r\nwhich exhibit a large non-Gaussianity.