Related papers: Cosmic Strings from Supersymmetric Flat Directions
Cosmic strings are predicted by many field-theory models, and may have been formed at a symmetry-breaking transition early in the history of the universe, such as that associated with grand unification. They could have important…
Cosmic strings are linear concentrations of energy that form whenever phase transitions in the early universe break axial symmetries as originally shown by Kibble. They are the result of frustrated order in the quantum fields responsible…
Cosmic strings are topological defects possibly formed in the early Universe, which may be observable due to their gravitational effects on the cosmic microwave background radiation or gravitational wave experiments. To this effect it is…
We study field theoretical models for cosmic strings with flat directions in curved space-time. More precisely, we consider minimal models with semilocal, axionic and tachyonic strings, respectively. In flat space-time, the string solutions…
In these lectures I discuss the possibility that superstrings of cosmic length might exist and be observable. I first review the original idea of cosmic strings arising as gauge theory solitons, and discuss in particular their network…
We show that stable local cosmic strings are a generic prediction of supersymmetric models where supersymmetry is broken at scales within a few orders of magnitude of the weak scale and is fed down to the observable sector by gauge…
${\rm B - L}$ cosmic strings form in a wide class of theories beyond the Standard Model which contain a ${\rm U}(1)_{{\rm B - L}}$ gauge symmetry. They can form at the end of hybrid inflation and explain, together with inflation, the Cosmic…
Cosmic strings can arise in hidden sector models with a spontaneously broken Abelian symmetry group. We have studied the couplings of the Standard Model fields to these so-called dark strings in the companion paper. Here we survey the…
Cosmic strings are one-dimensional topological defects which could have been formed in the early stages of our Universe. They triggered a lot of interest, mainly for their cosmological implications: they could offer an alternative to…
The topic of cosmic strings provides a bridge between the physics of the very small and the very large. They are predicted by some unified theories of particle interactions. If they exist, they may help to explain some of the largest-scale…
Making use of the wealth of new observational data coming from the sky it is possible to constrain particle physics theories beyond the Standard Model. One way to do this is illustrated in this article: a subset of theories admits cosmic…
Cosmic strings are linear concentrations of energy that may be formed at phase transitions in the very early universe. At one time they were thought to provide a possible origin for the density inhomogeneities from which galaxies eventually…
Cosmic strings are predicted in many models beyond the Standard Model of particle physics. In models which admit strings, a network of strings will inevitably be formed in a phase transition in the early universe and will persist to the…
Flat directions are a generic feature of supersymmetric theories. They are of cosmological interest because they can lead to coherent production of scalars. In the early universe such flat directions could be dangerous due to the…
Whilst standard field theoretic Cosmic Strings cannot end, Cosmic Superstrings can form three string junctions, at which each string ends. This opens up a new class of possible boundary conditions for such strings and we show that, at least…
Supersymmetric theories, including the minimal supersymmetric standard model, usually contain many scalar fields whose potentials are absent in the exact supersymmetric limit and within the renormalizable level. Since their potentials are…
Cosmic strings, a hot subject in the 1980's and early 1990's, lost its appeal when it was found that it leads to inconsistencies in the power spectrum of the measured cosmic microwave background temperature anisotropies. However,…
We consider the cosmological consequences of a network of superconducting cosmic strings. For strong enough current the period of friction domination never ends. Instead a plasma scaling solution is reached. We demonstrate that this gives…
New physics beyond the Standard Model can give rise to stochastic gravitational-wave backgrounds, for example through cosmic strings. In this way, gravitational-wave searches with pulsar-timing arrays as well as existing and future laser…
The space-time dimensions transverse to a static straight cosmic string with a sufficiently large tension (supermassive cosmic strings) are compact and typically have a singularity at a finite distance form the core. In this paper, we…