Non-gaussianity from broken symmetries

Recently we studied inflation models in which the inflation potential is characterized by an underlying approximate global symmetry. In the first work we pointed out that in such a model curvature perturbations are generated after the end of the slow-roll phase of inflation. In this work we develop further the observational implications of the model and compute the degree of non-Gaussianity predicted in the scenario. We find that the corresponding nonlinearity parameter, F{sub NL}, can be as large as 10{sup 2}