Related papers: Gravitational Wave Bursts from Cosmic Superstrings…
In these lectures, I review the current status of cosmic strings and cosmic superstrings. I first discuss topological defects in the context of Grand Unified Theories, focusing in particular in cosmic strings arising as gauge theory…
During supernova core collapse and bounce resonant active-to-active, as well as active-to-sterile, neutrino ($\nu$) oscillations can take place. Over this phase weak magnetism increases antineutrino mean free paths, and thus its luminosity.…
We study the deflection of light in the background of a "wiggly" cosmic string, and investigate whether it is possible to detect cosmic strings by means of weak gravitational lensing. For straight strings without small-scale structure there…
Cosmic strings are generically predicted in many extensions of the Standard Model of particle physics. We propose a new avenue for detecting cosmic strings through their effect on the filamentary structure in the cosmic web. Using…
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…
We investigate the contribution made by small loops from a cosmic string network as seeds for large-scale structure formation. We show that cosmic string loops are highly correlated with the long-string network on large scales and therefore…
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…
According to the strange quark matter hypothesis, strange planets may exist, which are planetary mass objects composed of almost equal numbers of up, down and strange quarks. A strange planet can revolve around its host strange star in a…
The cosmic string is a useful probe of the early Universe and may give us a clue to physics at high energy scales where any artificial particle accelerators cannot reach. Although one of the most promising tools is the cosmic microwave…
We discuss some hitherto puzzling features of the small-scale structure of cosmic strings. We argue that kinks play a key role, and that an important quantity to study is their sharpness distribution. In particular we suggest that for very…
Global cosmic strings are predicted in many motivated extensions to the Standard Model of particle physics, with close connections to axion dark matter physics. Recent studies suggest that, although subdominant relative to Goldstone…
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…
In theories of supersymmetry breaking, it is often the case that there is more than one metastable vacuum. First-order phase transitions among such metastable vacua may generate a stochastic background of gravitational waves, the…
In supersymmetric theories, cosmic strings produced in the early Universe often have a width of TeV scale, while the tension is much larger. In a scaling regime, an infinite cosmic string releases significant fraction of its energy in the…
Cosmological shock waves are induced during hierarchical formation of large-scale structure in the universe. Like most astrophysical shocks, they are collisionless, since they form in the tenuous intergalactic medium through electromagnetic…
Gravitational-wave searches for cosmic strings are currently hindered by the presence of detector glitches, some classes of which strongly resemble cosmic string signals. This confusion greatly reduces the efficiency of searches. A…
We present projected constraints on the cosmic string tension, $G\mu/c^2$, that could be achieved by future gravitational wave detection experiments and express our results as semi-analytic relations of the form $G\mu(\Omega_{\rm…
It has been speculated that cosmic string networks could produce ultra-high energy cosmic rays as a by-product of their evolution. By making use of recent work on the evolution of such networks, it will be shown that the flux of cosmic rays…
String cosmology models predict a stochastic cosmic background of gravitational waves with a characteristic spectrum. I describe the background, present astrophysical and cosmological bounds on it, and outline how it may be possible to…
We consider the gravitational lensing produced by long cosmic strings formed in a GUT scale phase transition. We derive a formula for the deflection of photons which pass near the strings that reduces to an integral over the light cone…