Mixed perturbations from an inflaton and two curvatons: Towards understanding non-Gaussianity in more complicated curvaton scenarios

Abstract

We analyse the situation where the primordial curvature perturbations are produced by the joint effects of an inflaton field and two curvaton fields. We present general equations which allow the reader to obtain f_NL for several different scenarios which differ in the order in which fields decay into radiation after inflation. In order to investigate the physics of these equations we analyse some simplified situations where the fields are harmonic and both curvatons are frozen at the same expectation value during inflation. We find quite complex behaviour - for a given situation where the inflaton contributes a fixed amount to the total curvature perturbation there are situations where f_NL is maximised if both curvatons share equally in contributing the rest and situations where f_NL is maximised if only one of the two curvatons contributes the rest. We are unable therefore to make any completely general extrapolations about the expected non-gaussianity from N curvatons. We find that as the curvaton contribution to the overall perturbation is gradually increased, f_NL rises to a maximum before falling again and that a given f_NL can correspond to many different parameter sets for the two curvatons.