Related papers: Constraints on cosmic strings using data from the …
A stochastic background of gravitational waves is expected to arise from a superposition of a large number of unresolved gravitational-wave sources of astrophysical and cosmological origin. It is expected to carry unique signatures from the…
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…
The intersection of string theory with cosmology is unavoidable in the early universe, and its exploration may shine light on both fields. In this thesis, three papers at this intersection are presented and reviewed, with the aim of…
A new candidate source of gravitational radiation is described: the nearly-perfect harmonic series from individual loops of cosmic string. It is argued that theories with light cosmic strings give rise to a population of numerous long-lived…
Nielsen-Olesen vortices in the Abelian-Higgs (AH) model are the simplest realisations of cosmic strings in a gauge field theory. Large-scale numerical solutions show that the dominant decay channel of a network of AH strings produced from…
Cosmic strings, if they exist, source nonlinear and non-Gaussian perturbations all the way back to the time of equal matter and radiation (and earlier). Here, we compute the mass function of halos seeded by a scaling distribution of cosmic…
Numerical simulations of Nambu-Goto cosmic strings in an expanding universe show that the loop distribution relaxes to an universal configuration, the so-called scaling regime, which is of power law shape on large scales. Precise…
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…
While topologically stable cosmic strings are disfavoured by the recent observation of nHz stochastic gravitational waves (GW) by Pulsar Timing Arrays (PTA), e.g., NANOGrav, cosmic metastable strings and superstrings are not. However,…
We search for gravitational-wave background signals produced by various early Universe processes in the Advanced LIGO O4a dataset, combined with the data from the earlier O1, O2, and O3 (LIGO-Virgo) runs. The absence of detectable signals…
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…
Cosmic strings are a type of cosmic defect formed by a symmetry-breaking phase transition in the early universe. Individual strings would have gathered to build a network, and their dynamical motion would induce scalar--, vector-- and…
We account for particle emission and gravitational radiation from cosmic string loops to determine their effect on the loop distribution and observational signatures of strings. The effect of particle emission is that the number density of…
We study the stochastic gravitational wave background sourced by a network of cosmic superstrings and demonstrate that incorporating higher-mass string species, beyond the fundamental string, is crucial for accurately modelling the…
We investigate gravitational-wave backgrounds (GWBs) of primordial origin that would manifest only at ultra-high frequencies, from kilohertz to 100 gigahertz, and leave no signal at either LIGO, Einstein Telescope, Cosmic Explorer, LISA, or…
We compute the gravitational waveform produced by cosmic superstring reconnections. This is done by first constructing the superstring reconnection trajectory, which closely resembles that of classical, instantaneous reconnection but with…
We perform a phenomenological comparison of the gravitational wave (GW) spectrum expected from cosmic gauge string networks and superstring networks comprised of multiple string types. We show how violations of scaling behavior and the…
Cosmic strings are predicted in many models beyond the Standard Model of particle physics. In models which admit strings, a network of strings will inevitably be formed in a phase transition in the early universe and will persist to the…
We include the effect of the frictional force caused by interactions between cosmic strings and the particles of the background plasma in the computation of the stochastic gravitational wave background generated by cosmic string loops.…
Flat directions are a generic feature of the scalar potential in supersymmetric gauge field theories. They can arise, for example, from D-terms associated with an extra abelian gauge symmetry. Even when supersymmetry is broken softly, there…