Related papers: Monopoles on strings
I will briefly review the formation and evolution of cosmic superstrings, in the context of brane-world cosmological models within M-theory. These objects can play the role of cosmic strings, offering a variety of astrophysical…
The composite cosmological objects -- Kibble-Lazarides-Shafi (KLS) walls bounded by strings and cosmic strings terminated by Nambu monopoles -- could be produced during the phase transitions in the early Universe. Recent experiments in…
We review the existence, formation and properties of cosmic strings in string theory, the wide variety of observational techniques that are being employed to detect them, and the constraints that current observations impose on string theory…
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…
Models of symmetry breaking in the early universe can produce networks of cosmic strings threading 't Hooft-Polyakov monopoles. In certain cases there is a larger global symmetry group and the monopoles split into so-called semipoles. These…
Cosmic strings are linear concentrations of energy that form whenever phase transitions in the early universe break axial symmetries as originally shown by Kibble. They are the result of frustrated order in the quantum fields responsible…
Recent work suggests that fundamental and Dirichlet strings, and their (p,q) bound states, may be observed as cosmic strings. The evolution of cosmic string networks, and therefore their observational signals, depends on what happens when…
Cosmological inflation and topological defects have been considered for a long time, either in disagreement or in competition. On the one hand an inflationary era is required to solve the shortcomings of the hot big bang model, while on the…
We show that cosmological observables can constrain the topology of the compact additional dimensions predicted by string theory. To do this, we develop a general strategy for relating cosmological observables to the microscopic parameters…
Monopole-antimonopole pairs connected by strings can be formed as topological defects in a sequence of cosmological phase transitions. Such hybrid defects typically decay early in the history of the universe but can still generate an…
In these lectures I discuss the possibility that superstrings of cosmic length might exist and be observable. I first review the original idea of cosmic strings arising as gauge theory solitons, and discuss in particular their network…
An inhomogeneous version of pre--Big Bang cosmology emerges, within string theory, from quite generic initial conditions, provided they lie deeply inside the weak-coupling, low-curvature regime. Large-scale homogeneity, flatness, and…
An overview is presented of some cosmological aspects of string theory. Recent developments are emphasised, especially the attempts to derive inflation or alternatives to inflation from the dynamics of branes in string theory. Time…
The interplay between string theory and cosmology is very promising. Since string theory will yield a quantum theory of space-time and unify all forces of nature, it has the potential of addressing many of the conceptual problems of the…
From theoretical point of view and not being in contradiction with current observational data, the cosmic strings should have fundamentally different origin and are characterized by wide range of energies. The paper is devoted to search for…
Over the past decade it has become clear that fundamental strings are not the only fundamental degrees of freedom in string theory. D-branes are also part of the spectrum of fundamental states. In this paper we explore some possible effects…
Topological defects are ubiquitous in condensed-matter physics but only hypothetical in the early universe. In spite of this, even an indirect evidence for one of these cosmic objects would revolutionize our vision of the cosmos. We give…
We study the formation of monopoles and strings in a model where SU(3) is spontaneously broken to U(2)=[SU(2)\times U(1)]/\ZZ_2, and then to U(1). The first symmetry breaking generates monopoles with both SU(2) and U(1) charges since the…
We develop a formalism for the quantization of topologically stable excitations in the 4-dimensional abelian lattice gauge theory. The excitations are global and local (Abrikosov-Nielsen-Olesen) strings and monopoles. The operators of…
It has been pointed out that cosmic string solutions can exist in gauge field theories with broken symmetry even when $\pi _1(G/H)$ is trivial. The stability of such semilocal defects is not guaranteed by topology and depends on dynamical…