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, phi(1) and phi(2), with exponential potentials, -V(i)exp(-c(i)phi(i)), 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 f(NL) = 5c(j)(2)/12, where c(j) is the exponent of the potential for the field which becomes subdominant at late times. Since c(j)(2) 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.