Related papers: Type I Abelian Higgs strings: evolution and Cosmic…
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 compute the spectral distortions of the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) arising during the epoch of cosmological hydrogen recombination within the standard cosmological (concordance) model for frequencies in the range 1 GHz-3500 GHz.…
Thermal inflation was proposed as a mechanism to dilute the density of cosmological moduli. Thermal inflation is driven by a complex scalar field possessing a large vacuum expectation value and a very flat potential, called a `flaton'. Such…
The static cylindrically symmetric solutions of the gravitating Abelian Higgs model form a two parameter family. In this paper we give a complete classification of the string-like solutions of this system. We show that the parameter plane…
We use a convolutional neural network (CNN) to study cosmic string detection in cosmic microwave background (CMB) flat sky maps with Nambu-Goto strings. On noiseless maps we can measure string tensions down to order $10^{-9}$, however when…
We describe a numerical simulation of the evolution of an $S_3$ cosmic string network which takes fully into account the non-commutative nature of the cosmic string fluxes and the topological obstructions which hinder strings from moving…
We perform a new and accurate study of the dependence on cosmological parameters of structure formation with local cosmic strings. The crucial new ingredients are the inclusion of the effects of gravitational backreaction on the evolution…
The dual theory describing the 4D Coulomb gas of point-like magnetically charged objects, which confines closed electric strings, is considered. The respective generalization of the theory of confining strings to confining membranes is…
In hidden sector models with an extra U(1) gauge group, new fields can interact with the Standard Model only through gauge kinetic mixing and the Higgs portal. After the U(1) is spontaneously broken, these interactions couple the resultant…
We use analytic calculations of the post-recombination gravitational effects of cosmic strings to estimate the resulting CMB power spectrum, bispectrum and trispectrum. We place a particular emphasis on multipole regimes relevant for…
The inconsistent Hubble constant values derived from cosmic microwave background (CMB) observations and from local distance-ladder measurements may suggest new physics beyond the standard $\Lambda$CDM paradigm. It has been found in earlier…
In cosmological models where local cosmic strings are formed at the end of a period of inflation, the perturbations are seeded both by the defects and by the quantum fluctuations. In a subset of these models, for example those based on…
In models where an additional SU(2)-doublet that does not have couplings to fermions participates in electroweak symmetry breaking, the properties of the Higgs boson are changed. At tree level, in the neighborhood of the SM-like range of…
We confront the predicted effects of hybrid inflationary models on the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) with three years of Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) observations. Using model selection, we compare the ability of a simple…
Motivated by the morphological measures in assessing the geometrical and topological properties of a generic cosmological stochastic field, we propose an extension of the weighted morphological measures, specifically the $n$th conditional…
We present the results of analysis of constraints on cosmological parameters from cosmic microwave background (CMB) alone and in combination with galaxy cluster baryon fraction assuming inflation--generated adiabatic scalar fluctuations.…
We present a catalog of gravitational wave background (GWB) signal templates from cosmic-string networks, based on relevant models proposed in the literature. We classify templates as conventional, based on standard cosmology and Nambu-Goto…
If they exist, networks of superconducting cosmic strings are capable of injecting copious amounts of electromagnetic energy into the background over a broad range of frequencies. We study this injection both analytically, as well as…
A novel mechanism to produce a cosmic network of fundamental superstrings based on a time-varying string tension has been recently proposed. It has been found that fundamental superstrings can grow in a kinating background driven by the…
Cosmic (super)strings offer promising ways to test ideas about the early universe and physics at high energies. While in field theory constructions their tension is usually assumed to be constant (or at most slowly-varying), this is often…