Local Primordial non-Gaussianity in Large-scale Structure – Marilena LoVerde

Date: Tue. February 21st, 2012, 11:30 am-12:30 pm
Location: Rockefeller 221

Primordial non-Gaussianity is among the most promising of few observational tests of physics at the inflationary epoch. At present non-Gaussianity is best constrained by the cosmic microwave background, but in the near term large-scale structure data may be competitive so long as the effects of primordial non-Gaussianity can be modeled through the non-linear process of structure formation. I will discuss recent work modeling effects of a few types of primordial non-Gaussianity on the large-scale halo clustering and the halo mass function. More specifically, I will compare analytic and N-body results for two variants of the curvaton model of inflation: (i) a “tau_NL” scenario in which the curvaton and inflaton contribute equally to the primordial curvature perturbation and (ii) a “g_NL” model where cancellations vanish the usual quadratic f_NL term in the potential, but give rise to a large cubic term. Download the slides