Abstract
Light fields with spatially varying backgrounds can modulate cosmic preheating, and imprint the nonlinear effects of preheating dynamics at tiny scales on large scale fluctuations. This provides us a unique probe into the preheating era which we dub the “cosmic microscope”. We identify a distinctive effect of preheating on scalar perturbations that turns the Gaussian primordial fluctuations of a light scalar field into square waves, like a diode. The effect manifests itself as local non-Gaussianity. We present a model, “modulated partial preheating”, where this nonlinear effect is consistent with current observations and can be reached by near future cosmic probes.
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Fan, J., Xianyu, ZZ. A cosmic microscope for the preheating era. J. High Energ. Phys. 2021, 21 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/JHEP01(2021)021
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/JHEP01(2021)021