Related papers: Cosmic Strings
A class of grand unified theories with symmetry breaking scale of order $10^{16} GeV$ have a Higgs particle with mass in the $TeV$ scale. The cosmology of such theories is very different from usual. We study the cosmic strings obtained in…
Appearance of cosmic strings in the early Universe is a common manifestation of new physics typically linked to some high energy scale. In this paper, we discuss a different situation, where a model underlying cosmic string formation is…
String theory avoids the ultraviolet infinities that arise in trying to quantize gravity. It is also more predictive than conventional quantum field theory, one aspect of this being the way that it contributed to the emergence of the…
This article briefly summarizes the motivations for -- and recent progress in -- searching for cosmological configurations within string theory, with a focus on how much we might reasonably hope to learn about fundamental physics from…
This paper deals with the geometry of supermassive cosmic strings. We have used an approach that enforces the spacetime of cosmic strings to also satisfy the conservation laws of a cylindric gravitational topological defect, that is a…
We consider the propagation of classical and quantum strings on cosmological space-times which interpolate from a collapsing phase to an expanding phase. We begin by considering the classical propagation of strings on space-times with…
Cosmic strings produce charged particles which, by emitting electromagnetic radiation, partially ionize neutral hydrogen during the dark ages. Corrections to the ionization fraction of neutral hydrogen induced by cosmic strings could lead…
We exploit the techniques of dynamical systems to study the cosmological evolution of cosmic fundamental strings and effective strings arising from branes wrapped on internal cycles. We also include the whole potential of the volume modulus…
A possible signature of a class of superconducting cosmic strings trapped in the Milky Way plasma is the emission of low energy antiprotons due to baryon number violating processes on the string. We find the terrestrial flux and the energy…
The time-dependent metric of a cosmic string leads to an effective interaction between the string and photons - the "gravitational Aharonov-Bohm" effect -- and causes cosmic strings to emit light. We evaluate the radiation of pairs of…
String gas cosmology is a string theory-based approach to early universe cosmology which is based on making use of robust features of string theory such as the existence of new states and new symmetries. A first goal of string gas cosmology…
We describe the results of high-resolution numerical simulations of string-induced structure formation in open universes and those with a non-zero cosmological constant. For models with $\Gamma = \Omega h = 0.1 - 0.2$ and a cold dark matter…
We include the effect of the frictional force caused by interactions between cosmic strings and the particles of the background plasma in the computation of the stochastic gravitational wave background generated by cosmic string loops.…
We show that metastable cosmic strings break at early times, either via finite-temperature effects or by attaching to pre-existing monopoles during network percolation. The resulting segments can be initially super-horizon in size and thus…
We examine variations in the equation of state of the cosmic string portion of the cosmological fluid which lead to perturbations of the background matter density. These fluctuations in the equation of state are due to variations in the…
We study the effects of cosmic strings on structure formation in open universes. We calculate the power spectrum of density perturbations for two class of models: one in which all the dark matter is non baryonic (CDM) and one in which it is…
We report that axions and photons exhibit instability in the presence of cosmic strings that are carrying magnetic flux in their core. The strength of the instability is determined by the symmetry breaking scale of the cosmic string theory.…
When gauged cosmic strings form in a symmetry-breaking phase transition, the gauge field configuration at the time becomes imprinted in the spatial string distribution by the flux trapping mechanism. It is shown that quantum and thermal…
Cosmic strings are predicted in various extensions of the Standard Model, including grand unified theories. Depending on the symmetry-breaking pattern, they can be either topologically stable or metastable. Intriguingly, metastable strings…
The intersection of string theory with cosmology is unavoidable in the early universe, and its exploration may shine light on both fields. In this thesis, three papers at this intersection are presented and reviewed, with the aim of…