Related papers: String Gas Cosmology after Planck
We consider whether current notions about superstring theory below the Planck scale are compatible with cosmology. We find that the anticipated form for the dilaton interaction creates a serious roadblock for inflation and makes it unlikely…
We investigate the behaviour of tensor fluctuations in Loop Quantum Cosmology, focusing on a class of scaling solutions which admit a near scale-invariant scalar field power spectrum. We obtain the spectral index of the gravitational field…
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…
We compute the spectrum of cosmological perturbations in a scenario in which inflation is driven by radiation in a non-commutative space-time. In this scenario, the non-commutativity of space and time leads to a modified dispersion relation…
Recently, it has been shown in Ref.[1] that the string thermodynamic fluctuation may lead to a scale invariant spectrum of scalar metric perturbation. However, its realization is still in study. In this note we suppose that the correlation…
We review applications of string theory to cosmology, from primordial times to the present-day accelerated expansion. Starting with a brief overview of cosmology and string compactifications, we discuss in detail moduli stabilisation,…
The combination of non-minimal couplings to gravity with the post-inflationary kinetic-dominated era typically appearing in quintessential inflation scenarios may lead to the spontaneous symmetry breaking of internal symmetries and its…
Many symmetry breaking patterns in grand unified theories (GUTs) give rise to cosmic strings that eventually decay when pairs of GUT monopoles spontaneously nucleate along the string cores. These strings are known as metastable cosmic…
One of the firm predictions of inflationary cosmology is the consistency relation between scalar and tensor spectra. It has been argued that such a relation -if experimentally confirmed- would offer strong support for the idea of inflation.…
The cosmic string theory for cosmological fluctuations is a good example of healthy scientific progress in cosmology. It is a well defined physically motivated model that has been tested by cosmological observations and has been ruled out…
Chain inflation proceeds through a series of first order phase transitions, which can release considerable gravitational waves (GW). We demonstrate that bubble collisions can leave an observable signature for future high-frequency probes of…
Within two specific string cosmology scenarios --differing in the way the pre- and post-big bang phases are joined-- we compute the size and spectral slope of various types of cosmologically amplified quantum fluctuations that arise in…
Recent observations by pulsar timing arrays (PTAs) such as NANOGrav, EPTA, PPTA, and CPTA suggest the presence of nanohertz stochastic gravitational wave background (GWB). While such signals could be explained by gravitational waves from a…
Thermal inflation was proposed as a mechanism to dilute the density of cosmological moduli. Thermal inflation is driven by a complex scalar field possessing a large vacuum expectation value and a very flat potential, called a `flaton'. Such…
We examine the spectrum of gravitational radiation emitted by a network of cosmic strings, with emphasis on the observational constraints and the opportunities for detection. The analysis improves over past work, as we use a…
We present a minimal model for the Universe evolution fully extracted from effective String Theory. This model is by its construction close to the standard cosmological evolution, and it is driven selfconsistently by the evolution of the…
In the light of the Planck 2015 results, we update simple inflationary models based on the quadratic, quartic, Higgs and Coleman-Weinberg potentials in the context of the Randall-Sundrum brane-world cosmology. Brane-world cosmological…
Overall, brane inflation is compatible with the recent analysis of the WMAP data. Here we explore the constraints of WMAP and 2dFGRS data on the various brane inflationary scenarios. Brane inflation naturally ends with the production of…
In cosmological models where local cosmic strings are formed at the end of a period of inflation, the perturbations are seeded both by the defects and by the quantum fluctuations. In a subset of these models, for example those based on…
This is a short review on strings in curved spacetimes. We start by recalling the classical and quantum string behaviour in singular plane waves backgrounds. We then report on the string behaviour in cosmological spacetimes (FRW, de Sitter,…