We investigate primordial non-Gaussianity and dark matter isocurvature fluctuations in the modulated reheating and the curvaton scenarios. In these scenarios, a large non-Gaussianity can be generated; on the other hand, depending on how dark matter is produced, too large isocurvature fluctuations can also arise, which is inconsistent with current observations. In this paper, we study this issue in a mixed scenario where the curvature fluctuations can also be produced from the inflaton fluctuations as well as those from a light scalar field such as the modulus and the curvaton. We show that primordial fluctuations can be highly non-Gaussian without conflicting with the current constraint on isocurvature fluctuations for such mixed scenarios. However, if the constraint on isocurvature fluctuations becomes severer as expected by the Planck satellite, $f_{\mathrm{NL}}$, a nonlinearity parameter for adiabatic fluctuations, should be very small as $f_{\mathrm{NL}}\lesssim 3$, which would give interesting implications for the generation mechanism of dark matter. Non-Gaussianity from isocurvature fluctuations is also discussed in these scenarios.

• Received 26 July 2009

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevD.80.063524