Statistical anisotropy from vector curvaton in D-brane inflation

We investigate the possibility of embedding the vector curvaton paradigm in D-brane models of inflation in type IIB string theory in a simple toy model. The vector curvaton is identified with the U(1)$U(1)$ gauge field that lives on the world volume of a D3-brane, which may be stationary or undergoing general motion in the internal space. The dilaton is considered as a spectator field which modulates the evolution of the vector field. In this set-up, the vector curvaton is able to generate measurable statistical anisotropy in the spectrum and bispectrum of the curvature perturbation assuming that the dilaton evolves as e^−?∝a²$e^{-?}\propto a^2$ where a(t)$a(t)$ is the scale factor. Our work constitutes a first step towards exploring how such distinctive features may arise from the presence of several light fields that naturally appear in string theory models of cosmology.