  A model of multi-component hybrid inflation, dubbed multi-brid inflation, in
which various observable quantities including the non-Gaussianity parameter
f_{NL} can be analytically calculated was proposed recently. In particular, for
a two-brid inflation model with an exponential potential and the condition that
the end of inflation is an ellipse in the field space, it was found that, while
keeping the other observational quantities within the range consistent with
observations, large non-Gaussianity is possible for certain inflationary
trajectories, provided that the ratio of the two masses is large. One might
question whether the resulting large non-Gaussianity is specific to this
particular form of the potential and the condition for the end of inflation. In
this paper, we consider a model of multi-brid inflation with a potential given
by an exponential function of terms quadratic in the scalar field components.
We also consider a more general class of ellipses for the end of inflation than
those studied previously. Then, focusing on the case of two-brid inflation, we
find that large non-Gaussianity is possible in the present model even for the
equal-mass case. Then by tuning the model parameters, we find that there exist
models for which both the non-Gaussianity and the tensor-to-scalar ratio are
large enough to be detected in the very near future.
