Christian T. Byrnes, Marina Cortês, Andrew R. Liddle

The latest results from the Atacama Cosmology Telescope Collaboration have moved the preferred perturbation spectral index $n_{\rm s}$ towards one. We reanalyse constraints on the simplest version of the curvaton model, using $n_{\rm s}$ and the tensor-to-scalar ratio $r$. We show that in the massless curvaton case the model gives the same locus of $n_{\rm s}$-$r$ predictions as the power-law model $V(\phi) \propto \phi^p$, but with a different and more elegant physical interpretation. The model gives an excellent account of current observational data, both in the regime where the curvaton dominates the observed perturbations and with an admixture of inflaton-originated perturbations of up to about one-third of the total. Forthcoming large-scale structure surveys, such as that of the recently-launched SPHEREx probe, could discriminate between curvaton and single-field inflation models using the bispectrum.