Institute for Advanced Study/Princeton University Early Universe/Cosmology Lunch Discussion

A signal of Local Primordial non-Gaussianity (LPNG) in the cosmological density field heralds the presence of multiple fields in the inflationary era. Optical and NIR galaxy surveys will soon exceed the sensitivity of the Cosmic Microwave Background and become the most powerful probe of such a signal. I will present recent and current work on the connection between galaxies tracing large-scale structure and LPNG in the early universe. Specifically, I will detail how splitting a population of galaxies in a survey by their clustering properties can increase the survey sensitivity to LPNG if host halo information beyond mass is considered. I will also discuss a new technique for estimating the response of galaxy number density to the presence of LPNG (the LPNG bias) directly from survey data. Finally, I will show the results of a consistency test of the large-scale perturbative biasing framework at the field level in the context of LPNG.