Non-Gaussian bubbles in the sky

¹ Yukawa Institute for Theoretical Physics, Kyoto University - Kyoto, Japan
² Institute for Cosmic Ray Research, University of Tokyo - Chiba, Japan

Received: 28 August 2012
Accepted: 3 October 2012

Abstract

We point out a possible generation mechanism of non-Gaussian bubbles in the sky due to bubble nucleation in the early universe. We consider a curvaton scenario for inflation and assume that the curvaton field ϕ, whose energy density is subdominant during inflation but which is responsible for the curvature perturbation of the universe, is coupled to another field σ which undergoes false vacuum decay through quantum tunneling. For this model, we compute the skewness of the curvaton fluctuations due to its interaction with σ during tunneling, that is, on the background of an instanton solution that describes false vacuum decay. We find that the resulting skewness of the curvaton can become large in the spacetime region inside the bubble. We then compute the corresponding skewness in the statistical distribution of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) temperature fluctuations. We find a non-vanishing skewness in a bubble-shaped region in the sky. It can be large enough to be detected in the near future, and if detected it will bring us invaluable information about the physics in the early universe.