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Starting from an initial classical four dimensional flat background of the heterotic or type II superstrings, we are able to determine at the string one-loop level the quantum corrections to the effective potential due to the spontaneous…
Static quark-antiquark states in QCD, at finite quark separation, have a spectrum of metastable states corresponding to string-like excitations of the gauge field. In this article I suggest that there may also exist an excitation spectrum…
Cosmic strings produce charged particles which, by emitting electromagnetic radiation, partially ionize neutral hydrogen during the dark ages. Corrections to the ionization fraction of neutral hydrogen induced by cosmic strings could lead…
In string gas cosmology, the extra dimensions of the underlying theory are kept at a microscopic scale by a gas of strings. In the matter-dominated era, however, dust pressure can lead to oscillations of the extra dimensions and to…
In the context of the black hole/string transition, it is useful to produce Euclidean string backgrounds representing hot and self-gravitating strings. We utilise analytical and numerical methods to find a smooth, stationary rotating…
Cosmic strings are predicted by many Standard Model extensions involving the cosmological breaking of a symmetry with nontrivial first homotopy group and represent a potential source of primordial gravitational waves (GWs). Present efforts…
We address the important issue of stabilizing the dilaton in the context of superstring cosmology. Scalar potentials which arise out of gaugino condensates in string models are generally exponential in nature. In a cosmological setting this…
We show the existence of solitonic solutions of five-dimensional supergravity, which can be interpreted as global cosmic strings in our universe. They possess the same mathematical structure as the stringy cosmic strings studied by Greene,…
A cosmic string network created during an inflationary stage in the early Universe - here defined as i-string network - is expected to enter a transient stretching regime during inflation, in which its characteristic length is stretched to…
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,…
We present a critical review and summary of String Gas Cosmology. We include a pedagogical derivation of the effective action starting from string theory, emphasizing the necessary approximations that must be invoked. Working in the…
We exploit the techniques of dynamical systems to study the cosmological evolution of cosmic fundamental strings and effective strings arising from branes wrapped on internal cycles. We also include the whole potential of the volume modulus…
We study the gravitational radiation emission efficiency $\Gamma$ of superconducting cosmic strings. We demonstrate, by using a solvable model of transonic strings, that the presence of a current leads to a suppression of the gravitational…
Cosmic superstring loops generically contain strings of different tensions that meet at Y-junctions. These loops evolve non-periodically in time, and have cusps and kinks that interact with the junctions. We study the effect of junctions on…
We make a systematic investigation of stationary cylindrically symmetric solutions to the five-dimensional Einstein and Einstein-Gauss-Bonnet equations. Apart from the five-dimensional neutral cosmic string metric, we find two new exact…
Cosmological consequences of a string-motivated dark energy scenario featuring a scalar field coupled to the Gauss-Bonnet invariant are investigated. We study the evolution of the universe in such a model, identifying its key properties.…
We consider the low energy phenomenology of superstrings. In particular we analyse supersymmetry breaking via gaugino condensate and we compare the phenomenology of the two different approaches to stabilize the dilaton field. We study the…
We show that there exist massive perturbative states of the ten dimensional Green-Schwarz closed superstring that are stabilized against collapse due to presence of fermionic zero modes on its worldsheet. The excited fermionic degrees of…
We consider the evolution of a network of strings in an expanding universe, allowing for the formation of junctions between strings of different tensions. By explicitly including, in the velocity-dependent evolution equations for the…
We study the formation of gravitating global strings through quantum mechanical tunneling. The instantons that describe the nucleation process are characterized by two parameters: the string core thickness and its gravitational backreaction…