Reconstructing the Inflationary Landscape with Cosmological Data
  We show that the shape of the inflationary landscape potential may be
constrained by analyzing cosmological data. The quantum fluctuations of fields
orthogonal to the inflationary trajectory may have probed the structure of the
local landscape potential, inducing non-Gaussianity (NG) in the primordial
distribution of the curvature perturbations responsible for the cosmic
microwave background (CMB) anisotropies and our Universe's large-scale
structure. The resulting type of NG (tomographic NG) is determined by the shape
of the landscape potential, and it cannot be fully characterized by 3- or
4-point correlation functions. Here we deduce an expression for the profile of
this probability distribution function in terms of the landscape potential, and
we show how this can be inverted in order to reconstruct the potential with the
help of CMB observations. While current observations do not allow us to infer a
significant level of tomographic NG, future surveys may improve the possibility
of constraining this class of primordial signatures.
