Non-Gaussianities from ekpyrotic collapse with multiple fields

We compute the non-Gaussianity of the curvature perturbation generated by ekpyrotic collapse with multiple fields. The transition from the multi-field scaling solution to a single-field dominated regime converts initial isocurvature field perturbations to an almost scale-invariant comoving curvature perturbation. In the specific model of two fields, φ1 and φ2, with exponential potentials, −Vi exp(−ciφi), we calculate the bispectrum of the resulting curvature perturbation. We find that the non-Gaussianity is dominated by non-linear evolution on super-Hubble scales and hence is of the local form. The non-linear parameter of the curvature perturbation is given by fNL = 5c 2 j/12, where cj is the exponent of the potential for the field which becomes sub-dominant at late times. Since cj must be large, in order to generate an almost scale invariant spectrum, the non-Gaussianity is inevitably large. Thus, the model is strongly constrained by observational bounds on the spectral index and non-Gaussianity.