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This paper is aimed at setting observational limits to the number of cosmic strings (Nambu-Goto, Abelian-Higgs, semilocal) and other topological defects (textures). Radio maps of CMB anisotropy, provided by the space mission Planck for…
We consider quintessence models within 4D effective descriptions of gravity coupled to two scalar fields. These theories are known to give rise to viable models of late-time cosmic acceleration without any need for flat potentials, and so…
General ideas of gauge/gravity duality allow for the possibility of time dependent solutions that interpolate between a perturbative gauge theory phase and a weakly curved string/gravity phase. Such a scenario applied to cosmology would…
We provide a thorough exposition of recent results on the quantum stabilization of cosmic strings. Stabilization occurs through the coupling to a heavy fermion doublet in a reduced version of the standard model. The study combines the…
A new approach for investigating the classical dynamics of the relativistic string model with rigidity is proposed. It is based on the embedding of the string world surface into the space of a constant curvature. It is shown that the rigid…
I use a combination of state-of-the-art numerical simulations and analytic modelling to discuss the scaling properties of cosmic defect networks, including superstrings. Particular attention is given to the role of extra degrees of freedom…
We investigate some consequences of a specific non-conservation of the energy-momentum tensor on the physics of certain cosmic string configurations. This non-conservation is induced by a new gravitational theory recently introduced as an…
Motivated by the fact that cosmological perturbations of inflationary quantum origin were born Gaussian, the search for non-Gaussianities in the cosmic microwave background (CMB) anisotropies is considered as the privileged probe of…
Macroscopic fundamental and Dirichlet strings have several potential instabilities: breakage, tachyon decays, and confinement by axion domain walls. We investigate the conditions under which metastable strings can exist, and we find that…
We study junctions between confining strings. We show that the effective theory of such junctions is very predictive with only one new parameter, the junction's mass, controlling the first couple of terms in the expansion in the system…
Spontaneous particle-pair formation is a fundamental phenomenon in nature. It can, for example, appear when the potential energy between two particles increases with separation, as if they were connected by a tense string. Beyond a critical…
We consider F-strings with arbitrary configurations in the Minkowski directions of a higher-dimensional spacetime, which also wrap and spin around $S^1$ subcycles of constant radius in an arbitrary internal manifold, and determine the…
We assume that a self-gravitating string is locally described by a thin tube of matter represented by a ``smoothed conical metric''. If we impose a specific constraint on the model of string then its central line obeys the Nambu-Goto…
A synthetic report of the advances in the study of classical and quantum string dynamics in curved backgrounds is provided, namely: the new feature of multistring solutions; the effect of a cosmological constant and of spacial curvature on…
Mechanical resonator networks are currently discussed in the context of model systems giving insight into problems of condensed matter physics including effects in topological phases. Here, we discuss networks based on three high-quality…
We formulate an analytic method to study the discontinuities in superconducting cosmic strings. Equations of discontinuities and conditions of their existence are derived from the intrinsic and extrinsic equations of motion. It is the…
We consider the spacetime dynamics of a gas of closed strings in the context of General Relativity in a background of arbitrary spatial dimensions. Our motivation is primarily late time String Gas Cosmology, where such a spacetime picture…
We study the three-pronged strings (three string junctions) from the point of view of D-string worldsheet gauge theory. We justify interpreting kink solutions in the 2-dimensional gauge theory as pronged strings by examining BPS energy…
A major result of the Effective String Theory (EST) description of confinement is the so called "low energy universality," which states that the first few terms of the large distance expansion of any EST are universal and coincide with…
String breaking is a central dynamical process in theories featuring confinement, where a string connecting two charges decays at the expense of the creation of new particle-antiparticle pairs. Here, we show that this process can also be…