Related papers: Low-Lying Cosmic String Spectrum and Background Fi…
We consider aspects of the low energy description of global cosmic strings. In the non-relativistic limit, we study the extent to which these are described by the combination of the Nambu-Gotto and Kalb-Ramond actions. While in a formal…
We study the interaction of several types of static straight cosmic strings, including local strings, global strings, and bosonic superconducting strings with and without magnetic currents. First, we evaluate the interaction energy of two…
We present a combined analytical and numerical study of the effective action of field theory cosmic strings in the Abelian-Higgs model in flat space. Starting directly from the underlying solitonic field theory description, we provide a…
We investigate the low-frequency spectral emission from a network of superconducting cosmic string loops in hopes of explaining the observed radio synchrotron background. After considering constraints from a variety of astrophysical and…
In this thesis, consisting of two main parts, we study observational signatures of cosmic (super)strings in the context of D-brane inflation and properties of scalar perturbations on generic homogeneous inflating backgrounds. In the first…
Motivated by astrophysical observations of excess electronic production in the galaxy, new theoretical models of the dark matter sector have been proposed in which the Standard model couples to the dark matter sector through an attractive…
If the Universe underwent a cosmic phase transition, it may have left behind a network of cosmic strings. When these strings arise from the breaking of a gauge symmetry, their decay produces a significant stochastic background of…
Based on the studies in Type IIB string theory phenomenology, we conjecture that a good fraction of the meta-stable de Sitter vacua in the cosmic stringy landscape tend to have a very small cosmological constant $\Lambda$ when compared to…
The relativistic quantum motion of scalar bosons under the influence of a full vector (minimal $A^{\mu}$ and nonminimal $X^{\mu}$) and scalar ($V_{s}$) interactions embedded in the background of a cosmic string is explored in the context of…
We derive the 4D low energy effective field theory for a closed string gas on a time dependent FRW background. We examine the solutions and find that although the Brandenberger-Vafa mechanism at late times no longer leads to radion…
In this thesis we investigate the microphysics of cosmic strings in non-minimal quantum field theories. In particular we consider theories in which fermion fields couple to the strings, and those with larger symmetry groups, such as grand…
We construct cosmological spacetimes with null Kasner-like singularities as purely gravitational solutions with no other background fields turned on. These can be recast as anisotropic plane-wave spacetimes by coordinate transformations. We…
We use lattice techniques to study the closed-string spectrum of SU(N) gauge theories in 2+1 dimensions. We calculate the energies of the lowest lying ~30 states for strings with lengths between l ~ 0.45 fm and l ~ 3 fm, and compare to…
We consider, in a string theory framework, physical processes of phenomenological interest in models with a low string scale. The amplitudes we study involve tree-level virtual gravitational exchange, divergent in a field-theoretical…
Topological defects are a fossil relic of early Universe phase transitions, with cosmic strings being the best motivated example. While in most cases one studies Nambu-Goto or Abelian-Higgs strings, one also expects that cosmologically…
I report on recent numerical simulations of the simplest field theory with cosmic string solutions, the Abelian Higgs model. We find that random networks of string quickly converge to a scaling solution in which the network scale length…
I briefly summarize a recent research program aiming to probe the landscape of low-energy phases of string theory from a global perspective. Borrowing conceptual lessons from the swampland program, I will discuss how the effective theories…
We study cosmic strings in the complex symmetron model, a scalar-tensor theory with a spontaneously broken local $U(1)$ symmetry in low matter density regions. Using numerical simulations, we show that these strings preferentially attach to…
We simulate the formation of cosmic strings at the zeros of a complex Gaussian field with a power spectrum $P(k) \propto k^n$, specifically addressing the issue of the fraction of length in infinite strings. We make two improvements over…
We generalize the calculation of cosmic superstring reconnection probability to non-trivial backgrounds. This is done by modeling cosmic strings as wound tachyon modes in the 0B theory, and the spacetime effective action is then used to…