Hyper-Non-Gaussianities in Inflation with Strongly Nongeodesic Motion

Abstract

Several recent proposals to embed inflation into high-energy physics rely on inflationary dynamics characterized by a strongly nongeodesic motion in negatively curved field space. This naturally leads to a transient instability of perturbations on sub-Hubble scales, and to their exponential amplification. Supported by first-principles numerical computations, and by the analytical insight provided by the effective field theory of inflation, we show that the bispectrum is enhanced in flattened configurations, and we argue that an analogous result holds for all higher-order correlation functions. These "hyper-non-Gaussianities" thus provide powerful model-independent constraints on nonstandard inflationary attractors motivated by the search for ultraviolet completions of inflation.