Gauge-Invariant Temperature Anisotropies and Primordial Non-Gaussianity
Abstract
We provide the gauge-invariant expression for large-scale cosmic microwave background temperature fluctuations at second-order in perturbation theory. It enables to unambiguously define the nonlinearity parameter fNL which is used by experimental collaborations to pin down the level of Non-Gaussianity in the temperature fluctuations. Furthermore, it contains a primordial term encoding all the information about the Non-Gaussianity generated at primordial epochs and about the mechanism which gave rise to cosmological perturbations, thus neatly disentangling the primordial contribution to Non-Gaussianity from the one caused by the post-inflationary evolution.
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