Related papers: String Fragmentation in Supercooled Confinement an…
String-loop effects may generate very weak matter couplings for a (massless) dilaton. We examine limits on the shift of such a dilaton toward its present equilibrium value from big-bang nucleosynthesis and the binary pulsar. On the other…
It is shown that naive two stage scenario of the soft multiparticle production in hadronic and nuclear collisions at high energy, when at first stage the colour strings are formed and at the second stage these strings, or some other (higher…
The separation of a heavy quark and antiquark pair leads to the formation of a tube of flux, or string, which should break in the presence of light quark-antiquark pairs. This expected zero temperature phenomenon has proven elusive in…
First-order phase transitions can leave relic pockets of false vacua and their particles, that manifest as macroscopic Dark Matter. We compute one predictive model: a gauge theory with a dark quark relic heavier than the confinement scale.…
As a follow up of the seminal work by Guiot, Borquez, Deur, and Werner on "Graviballs and Dark Matter", we explicitly show that contrary to Einstein's gravity, in string theory, local and nonlocal higher derivative theories, as well as…
We consider the cosmological consequences of a network of superconducting cosmic strings. For strong enough current the period of friction domination never ends. Instead a plasma scaling solution is reached. We demonstrate that this gives…
The black hole information paradox forces us into a strange situation: we must find a way to break the semiclassical approximation in a domain where no quantum gravity effects would normally be expected. Traditional quantizations of gravity…
We study confining strings in ${\cal{N}}=1$ supersymmetric $SU(N_c)$ Yang-Mills theory in the semiclassical regime on $\mathbb{R}^{1,2} \times \mathbb{S}^1$. Static quarks are expected to be confined by double strings composed of two domain…
We investigate the string configuration that, in the framework of the theoretical scenario introduced in [1], corresponds to the most entropic configuration in the phase space of all the configurations of the universe. This describes a…
A small fraction, $f$, of cosmic string loops can collapse to form Primordial Black Holes (PBHs). Constraints on the abundance of PBHs can therefore be used to constrain $f$. We update these calculations, taking into account the PBH…
Scalar dark matter can interact with Standard Model (SM) particles, altering the fundamental constants of Nature in the process. Changes in the fundamental constants during and prior to Big Bang nucleosynthesis (BBN) produce changes in the…
The weakly coupled vacuum of $E_8\otimes E_8$ heterotic string theory remains an attractive scenario for particle physics. The particle spectrum and the issue of dilaton stabilization are reviewed. A specific model for hidden sector…
In recent years we have come to understand how the information paradox is resolved in string theory. The huge entropy $S_{bek}={A\over 4G}$ of black holes is realized by an explicit set of horizon sized `fuzzball' wavefunctions. The…
In the established era of dark matter, condensed matter Hamiltonians-including those of superconductors-may require extension to account for the surrounding Galactic environment. We show that if dark matter is wave-like and couples weakly…
Dark gauge sectors and axions are well-motivated in string theory. We demonstrate that if a confining gauge sector gives rise to dark glueballs that are a fraction of the dark matter, and the associated axion has a decay constant near the…
Light, weakly-coupled dark sectors may be naturally decoupled in the early universe and enter equilibrium with the Standard Model bath during the epoch of primordial nucleosynthesis. The equilibration and eventual decoupling of dark sector…
Confinement can have a considerable effect on the behavior of particle systems, and is therefore an effective way to discover new phenomena. A notable example is a system of identical bosons at low temperature under an external field…
A long-standing problem of theoretical physics is the exceptionally small value of the cosmological constant $\Lambda \sim 10^{-120}$ measured in natural Planckian units. Here we derive this tiny number from a toroidal string cosmology…
It is well-known that the liquid properties in a strongly confined system can be very different from their ordinary behaviors in an extended system, due to the competition between the thermal energy and the interaction energy. Here we show…
At high density, matter is expected to undergo a phase transition to deconfined quark matter. Although the density at which it happens and the strength of the transition are still largely unknown, we can model it to be in agreement with…