Primordial bispectrum from inflation with background gauge fields

Abstract

We study the primordial bispectrum of curvature perturbation in the uniform- density slicing generated by the interaction between the inflaton and isotropic background gauge fields. We derive the action up to cubic order in perturbation and take into account all the relevant effects in the leading order of slow-roll expansion. We first treat the quadratic vertices perturbatively and confirm the results of past studies, while identifying their regime of validity. We then extend the analysis to include the effect of the quadratic vertices to all orders by introducing exact linear mode functions, allowing us to make accurate predictions long after horizon crossing where the features of both the power spectrum and the bispectrum are drastically different. It is shown that the spPPectra become constant and scale-invariant in the limit of large e-folding. As a result, we are able to impose reliable constraints on the parameters of our theory using the recent observational data coming from Planck.