  Adiabatic (curvature) perturbations are produced during a period of
cosmological inflation that is driven by a single scalar field, the inflaton.
On particle physics grounds -- though -- it is natural to expect that this
scalar field is coupled to other scalar degrees of freedom. This gives rise to
oscillations between the perturbation of the inflaton field and the
perturbations of the other scalar degrees of freedom, similar to the phenomenon
of neutrino oscillations. Since the degree of the mixing is governed by the
squared mass matrix of the scalar fields, the oscillations can occur even if
the energy density of the extra scalar fields is much smaller than the energy
density of the inflaton field. The probability of oscillation is resonantly
amplified when perturbations cross the horizon and the perturbations in the
inflaton field may disappear at horizon crossing giving rise to perturbations
in scalar fields other than the inflaton. Adiabatic and isocurvature
perturbations are inevitably correlated at the end of inflation and we provide
a simple expression for the cross-correlation in terms of the slow-roll
parameters.
