Related papers: Cosmological effects of decaying cosmic string loo…
We account for particle emission and gravitational radiation from cosmic string loops to determine their effect on the loop distribution and observational signatures of strings. The effect of particle emission is that the number density of…
We re-visit the production of cosmic rays by cusps on cosmic strings. If a scalar field (``Higgs'') has a linear interaction with the string world-sheet, such as would occur if there is a bosonic condensate on the string, cusps on string…
Gravitational wave signatures from cosmic strings are analyzed numerically. Cosmic string networks form during phase transistions in the early universe and these networks of long cosmic strings break into loops that radiate energy in the…
Superconducting cosmic strings may be viewed as wires of thickness $1/\Lambda$ with $\Lambda=10^{16}$ TeV. We show that the weak interactions will spread out the current to distances $r= (1/M_Z)\ln (I/M_Z)$, where $I$ is the magnitude of…
Lowering the string scale in the TeV region provides a theoretical framework for solving the mass hierarchy problem and unifying all interactions. The apparent weakness of gravity can then be accounted by the existence of large internal…
These four lectures, addressed to an audience of graduate students in experimental high energy physics, survey some of the basic concepts in string theory. The purpose is to convey a general sense of what string theory is and what it has…
We investigate the cosmological and astrophysical constraints on superconducting cosmic strings (SCSs). SCS loops emit strong bursts of electromagnetic waves, which might affect various cosmological and astrophysical observations. We take…
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 properties of cosmic strings have been investigated in detail for their implications in early-universe cosmology. Although many variations of the basic structure have been discovered, with implications for both the microscopic and…
A synthesis of previous work done on the microscopic structure of cosmic strings in realistic models is made and reveals that strings are expected to be not only superconducting in the sense of Witten, but also generically current-carrying,…
We study the effect of free streaming in a universe with cosmic strings with time-varying tension as well as with constant tension. Although current cosmological observations suggest that fluctuation seeded by cosmic strings cannot be the…
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,…
It has recently been realised that strings with time-dependent tensions exhibit interesting dynamics; in particular, when the tension decreases loops of string can grow and possibly percolate. We extend previous analytic studies of strings…
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…
The Dark Ages and the Cosmic Dawn are an untapped well of information about the particle physics properties of dark matter, which may become accessible with future radio telescopes able to probe the 21-cm signal from atomic hydrogen. In…
We report on a large scale numerical study of networks of semilocal cosmic strings in flat space in the parameter regime in which they are perturbatively stable. We find a population of segments with an exponential length distribution and…
We study the evolution of cosmic strings taking into account the frictional force due to the surrounding radiation. We consider small perturbations on straight strings, oscillation of circular loops and small perturbations on circular…
Constraints on the tension and the abundance of cosmic strings depend crucially on the rate at which they decay into particles and gravitational radiation. We study the decay of cosmic string loops in the Abelian-Higgs model by performing…
The observed interaction energy of cosmic rays with atmospheric nuclei reaches up to a PeV in the center of mass. We compute nucleon-nucleon and nucleon-neutrino cross sections for various generic parton cross sections appearing in string…
Global topological defects produce nonzero stress-energy throughout spacetime, and as a result can have observable gravitational influence on surrounding matter. Gravitational effects of global strings are used to place bounds on their…