Related papers: Improved estimation of radiated axions from cosmol…
We present cosmic microwave background (CMB) power spectra from recent numerical simulations of cosmic strings in the Abelian Higgs model and compare them to CMB power spectra measured by Planck. We obtain revised constraints on the cosmic…
Motivated by recent developments in superstring theory in the cosmological context, we examine a field theory which contains string networks with 3-way junctions. We perform numerical simulations of this model, identify the length scales of…
Topological defects form at cosmological phase transitions by the Kibble mechanism, with cosmic strings and superstrings having the most interesting phenomenology. A rigorous analysis of their astrophysical consequences is limited by the…
The Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) fluctuations at very small angular scales (less than $10'$) induced by matter sources are computed in a simplified way. The result corrects a previous formula appearing in the literature. The small…
The static stationary axially symmetric background ("infinite cosmic string") of the $D=4$ string theory provided with an axion charge is studied in the effective theory approach. The most general exact solution is constructed. It is found…
A recently proposed mechanism for large-scale structure in string cosmology --based on massless axionic seeds-- is further analyzed and extended to the acoustic-peak region. Existence, structure, and normalization of the peaks turn out to…
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 study the formation and evolution of an interconnected string network in large-scale field-theory numerical simulations, both in flat spacetime and in expanding universe. The network consists of gauge U(1) strings of two different kinds…
We study the small scale structure of axion dark matter in the post-inflationary scenario, which predicts the formation of low-mass, high-density clumps of gravitationally bound axions called axion miniclusters. To this end, we follow…
A novel mechanism to produce a cosmic network of fundamental superstrings based on a time-varying string tension has been recently proposed. It has been found that fundamental superstrings can grow in a kinating background driven by the…
We evolve the network of global strings in the matter-dominated universe by means of numerical simulations. The existence of the scaling solution is confirmed as in the radiation-dominated universe but the scaling parameter $\xi$ takes a…
We present an analytic model specifically designed to address the long standing issue of small scale structure on cosmic string networks. The model is derived from the microscopic string equations, together with a few motivated assumptions.…
We study the contribution to the QCD axion dark matter abundance that is produced by string defects during the so-called scaling regime. Clear evidence of scaling violations is found, the most conservative extrapolation of which strongly…
We propose a novel observational strategy for the detection of pseudoaxions, emerging as transient resonances tied explicitly to the evolution of internal geometry in string theory and brane-world cosmologies. Building upon our previous…
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 examine which information on the early cosmological history can be extracted from the potential measurement by third-generation gravitational-wave observatories of a stochastic gravitational wave background (SGWB) produced by cosmic…
It is pointed out that there exist a few problems to be overcome toward an observable sub-eV QCD axion in superstring compactification. We give a general expression for the axion decay constant. For a large domain wall number $N_{DW}$, the…
Topological defects, particularly cosmic strings, can provide a mechanism to produce particles with energies of the order 10^21 eV and higher. Here, we report on order of magnitude calculations of fluxes from a cosmic string network which…
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…
In theories of axion dark matter with large axion decay constant, temperature variations in the CMB are extremely sensitive to perturbations in the initial axion field, allowing one to place a lower bound on the total amount of inflation.…