INVESTIGADORES
MOLLERACH Maria Silvia
artículos
Título:
The three-point correlation function of the cosmic microwave background in inflationary models
Autor/es:
A. GANGUI; F. LUCCHIN;S. MATARRESE; S. MOLLERACH
Revista:
ASTROPHYSICAL JOURNAL
Editorial:
IOP PUBLISHING LTD
Referencias:
Año: 1994 vol. 430 p. 447 - 457
ISSN:
0004-637X
Resumen:
We analyze the temperature three-point correlation function and the
skewness of the cosmic microwave background, providing general relations
in terms of multipole coefficients. We then focus on applications to
large angular scale anisotropies, such as those measured by the Cosmic
Background Explorer Satellite (COBE) differential microwave radiometer
(DMR) calculating the contribution to these quantities from primordial,
inflation-generated, scalar perturbations, via the Sachs-Wolfe effect.
Using the techniques of stochastic inflation, we are able to provide a
universal expression for the ensemble-averaged three-point function and
for the corresponding skewness, which accounts for all primordial
second-order effects. These general expressions would, moreover, apply
to any situation where the bispectrum of the primordial gravitational
potential has a hierarchical form. Our results are then specialized to a
number of relevant models: power-law inflation driven by an exponential
potential, chaotic inflation with a quartic and quadratic potential, and
a particular case of hybrid inflation. In all these cases non-Gaussian
effects are small: as an example, the mean skewness is much smaller than
the cosmic rms skewness implied by a Gaussian temperature fluctuation
field.