Related papers: Clustering of cosmic string loops
Observations of the clustering of galaxies can provide useful information about the distribution of dark matter in the Universe. In order to extract accurate cosmological parameters from galaxy surveys, it is important to understand how the…
We study the behaviour of cosmic string networks in contracting universes, and discuss some of their possible consequences. We note that there is a fundamental time asymmetry between defect network evolution for an expanding universe and a…
We have examined the spatial distribution of substructure in clusters of galaxies using Einstein X-ray observations. Subclusters are found to have a markedly anisotropic distribution that reflects the surrounding matter distribution on…
The time-dependent metric of a cosmic string leads to an effective interaction between the string and photons - the "gravitational Aharonov-Bohm" effect -- and causes cosmic strings to emit light. We evaluate the radiation of pairs of…
Cosmic superstring loops within the galaxy microlens background point sources lying close to the observer-string line of sight. For suitable alignments, multiple paths coexist and the (achromatic) flux enhancement is a factor of two. We…
Results for the gravitational Wilson loop, in particular the area law for large loops in the strong coupling region, and the argument for an effective positive cosmological constant discussed in a previous paper, are extended to other…
One of the possible low-energy consequences of string theory is the addition of a Chern-Simons term to the standard Einstein-Hilbert action of general relativity. It can be argued that the quintessence field should couple to this…
The light that we receive from clusters of galaxies is redshifted by the presence of the clusters' gravitational potential. This effect, known as gravitational redshift, was first detected from a sample of stacked clusters in 2011, by…
The string-dominated universe locally resembles an open universe, and fits dynamical measures of power spectra, cluster abundances, redshift distortions, lensing constraints, luminosity and angular diameter distance relations and microwave…
We show that in cosmology the gravitational action of the far away matter has quite relevant effects, if retardation of the forces and discreteness of matter (with its spatial correlation) are taken into account. The expansion rate is found…
The capture or scattering of an initially straight infinite test cosmic string by a Kerr-Newman black hole, or by any other small source of an electrovac gravitational field, is analyzed analytically when the string moves with initial…
A metastable cosmic-string network is a generic consequence of many grand unified theories (GUTs) when combined with cosmic inflation. Metastable cosmic strings are not topologically stable, but decay on cosmic time scales due to pair…
This pedagogical review addresses several issues related to statistical description of gravitating systems in both static and expanding backgrounds, focusing on the latter. After briefly reviewing the results for the static background, I…
We present results from a detailed numerical study of the small-scale and loop production properties of cosmic string networks, based on the largest and highest resolution string simulations to date. We investigate the non-trivial fractal…
Despite consistent progress in numerical simulations, the observable properties of galaxy clusters are difficult to predict ab initio. It is therefore important to compare both theoretical and observational results to a direct measure of…
Vector perturbations sourced by topological defects can generate rotations in the lensing of background galaxies. This is a potential smoking gun for the existence of defects since rotation generates a curl-like component in the weak…
We present the second-order general relativistic description of the observed galaxy number density in a cosmological framework. The observed galaxy number density is affected by the volume and the source effects, both of which arise due to…
Constraints on the tension and the abundance of cosmic strings depend crucially on the rate at which they decay into particles and gravitational radiation. We study the decay of cosmic string loops in the Abelian-Higgs model by performing…
The search for cosmic strings has been of renewed interest with the advent of precision cosmology. In this note we give a quantitative description of the nonlinear matter density fluctuations that can form from a scaling network of cosmic…
We use two high resolution CDM simulations to show that (i) when clusters of galaxies form the infall pattern of matter is not random but shows clear features which are correlated in time; (ii) in addition, the infall patterns are…