Related papers: How to simulate global cosmic strings with large s…
We study the formation of cosmic strings by confining a stochastic magnetic field into flux tubes in a numerical simulation. We use overdamped evolution in a potential that is minimized when the flux through each face in the simulation…
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…
Loops formed from a cosmic string network at early times would act as seeds for early formation of halos, which would form galaxies and lead to early reionization. With reasonable guesses about astrophysical and string parameters, the…
In real-time lattice simulations of cosmic strings in the Abelian Higgs model, the broken translational invariance introduces lattice artefacts; relativistic strings therefore decelerate and radiate. We introduce two different methods to…
Understanding axion cosmology has important experimental consequences since it constrains the range of allowed values for the axion mass. In the standard thermal scenario, which assumes Peccei-Quinn symmetry restoration after inflation, an…
We study the production of cosmological axions in the standard scenario in which a global string network forms at the Peccei-Quinn phase transition. We make detailed calculations of the axions produced by string loops (a previously…
We present in detail the convolutional neural network used in our previous work to detect cosmic strings in cosmic microwave background (CMB) temperature anisotropy maps. By training this neural network on numerically generated CMB…
Cosmic strings are topological defects which can be formed in GUT-scale phase transitions in the early universe. They are also predicted to form in the context of string theory. The main mechanism for a network of Nambu-Goto cosmic strings…
Topological defects form at cosmological phase transitions by the Kibble mechanism, with cosmic strings and superstrings having the most interesting phenomenology. A rigorous analysis of their astrophysical consequences is limited by the…
We investigate a static, cylindrically symmetric cosmic string on the brane without a perturbative approximation. We find there could be a (large) enhancement of the (effective) string tension when the energy density at the center of the…
We investigate scaling and correlations of the energy and momentum in an evolving network of cosmic strings in Minkowski space. These quantities are of great interest, as they must be understood before accurate predictions for the power…
Cosmological evolution of axionic strings is investigated by numerically solving field equations of a complex scalar field in 3+1 dimensions. It is shown that the global strings relax to the scaling solution with a significantly smaller…
We study the minimal requirements to obtain axion strings for axions with exponentially good quality. These ingredients appear in theories where an axion coming from a higher-form gauge field mixes with the phase of a complex scalar field…
We present observation of large, expanding string loops forming around a heated wire tip embedded in a nematic liquid crystal sample. Loops expand due to convective stretching. This observation leads to a new insight into phenomena which…
We investigate the non-gaussian properties of cosmic-string-seeded linear density perturbations with cold and hot dark matter backgrounds, using high-resolution numerical simulations. We compute the one-point probability density function of…
We argue that cosmic strings with high winding numbers generally form in first-order gauge symmetry breaking phase transitions, and we demonstrate this using computer simulations. These strings are heavier than single-winding strings and…
We describe a scenario for inflation in the framework of non-critical string theory, which does not employ an inflaton field. There is an exponential expansion of the volume of the Universe, induced by enormous entropy production in the…
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…
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…
We calculate the contribution of cosmic strings arising from a phase transition in the early universe, or cosmic superstrings arising from brane inflation, to the cosmic 21 cm power spectrum at redshifts z > 30. Future experiments can…