The holiest grail

Abstract

I will discuss to what degree the cosmic microwave background (CMB) can be used to constrain primordial non-Gaussianity involving one tensor and two scalar fluctuations, focusing on the correlation of one $B$-mode polarization fluctuation with two temperature fluctuations (BTT). In the simplest models of inflation, the tensor-scalar-scalar primordial bispectrum is non-vanishing and is of the same order in slow-roll parameters as the scalar-scalar-scalar bispectrum. I will show that constraints from an experiment like CMB-Stage IV using this observable are more than an order of magnitude better than those on the same primordial coupling obtained from temperature measurements alone. I will argue that $B$-mode non-Gaussianity opens up an as-yet-unexplored window into the early Universe, demonstrating that significant information on primordial physics remains to be harvested from CMB anisotropies. BTT presents a measure of both primordial tensors and primordial non-Gaussianity, two of the most sought after signatures of the inflationary paradigm.