Related papers: Breaking symmetry, breaking ground
The topic of cosmic strings provides a bridge between the physics of the very small and the very large. They are predicted by some unified theories of particle interactions. If they exist, they may help to explain some of the largest-scale…
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…
Professor Tom Kibble was an internationally-renowned theoretical physicist whose contributions to theoretical physics range from the theory of elementary particles to modern early-universe cosmology. The unifying theme behind all his work…
Topological defects are ubiquitous in physics. Whenever a symmetry breaking phase transition occurs, topological defects may form. The best known examples are vortex lines in type II super conductors or in liquid Helium, and declination…
In this paper we will discuss how cosmic strings can be used to bridge the gap between the local geometry of our spacetime model and the global topology. The primary tool is the theory of foliations and surfaces, and together with…
I summarize the development of the ideas of Spontaneous symmetry breaking in the 1960s with an outline of the Guralnik, Hagen, Kibble (GHK) paper and include comments on the relationship of this paper to those of Brout, Englert and Higgs. I…
I discuss historical material about the beginning of the ideas of spontaneous symmetry breaking and particularly the role of the Guralnik, Hagen Kibble paper in this development. I do so adding a touch of some more modern ideas about the…
Physicists in search of the foundation of the world: how tiny objects can create matter, energy and even space and time - and possibly countless other universes. -- This article is meant as an introduction into quantum geometry (loop…
In 2D topological systems chiral edges may exhibit a spectral change due to the formation of a Bose condensate and partial confinement in the bulk according to the topological symmetry breaking (TSB) mechanism. We analyze in detail what…
In the first part I set out some unexplored historical material about the early development of cosmic topology. In the second part I briefly comment new developments in the field since the Lachieze-Rey & Luminet report (1995), both from a…
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…
To appear in Encyclopedia of Mathematical Physics, J.-P. Fran\c{c}oise, G. Naber and T.S. Tsou, eds., Elsevier, 2006. The article surveys the modern developments of noncommutative geometry in string theory.
This is the written version of a talk given at the Santa Barbara Workshop on Supersymmetry in December of 1995. It summarizes a collection of results on superstring cosmology obtained by the author and various collaborators, and contains…
Here we give a reformulation of a key lemma in the paper [2], "Spaces of Topological Complexity One", which is necessary due to an oversight.
Exact string solutions are presented, where moduli fields are varying with time. They provide examples where a dynamical change of the topology of space is occurring. Some other solutions give cosmological examples where some dimensions are…
This article, written for Scolarpedia, provides a brief introduction into the subject of cosmic strings, together with a review of their main properties, cosmological evolution and observational signatures.
We investigate domain walls between topologically ordered phases in two spatial dimensions and present a simple but general framework from which their degrees of freedom can be understood. The approach we present exploits the results on…
Cosmic strings are predicted by many field-theory models, and may have been formed at a symmetry-breaking transition early in the history of the universe, such as that associated with grand unification. They could have important…
A review on topological strings and the geometry of the space of two dimensional theories. (Lectures given by C. Gomez at the Enrico Fermi Summer School, Varenna, July 1994)
This is an introductory set of lecture notes on quantum cosmology, given in 1995 to an audience with interests ranging from astronomy to particle physics. Topics covered: 1. Introduction: 1.1 Quantum cosmology and quantum gravity; 1.2 A…