Related papers: Axion strings are superconducting

Axions constitute a well-motivated dark matter candidate, and if PQ symmetry breaking occurred after inflation, it should be possible to make a clean prediction for the relation between the axion mass and the axion dark matter density. We…

We investigate the standard model in a cosmic string background and show that the electroweak symmetry is partially restored. For a range of parameters the electroweak Higgs field can wind in this region, producing an electroweak string…

Electromagnetic radiation from the cusp region of superconducting cosmic strings leads to a radio excess in the photon spectrum in the early universe and can produce a deep absorption feature in the global 21cm signal before the epoch of…

We show that the cosmological abundance of string axions is much smaller than naive estimates if the Hubble scale of inflation, $H_{\rm inf}$, is sufficiently low (but can still be much higher than the axion masses) and if the inflation…

We show that axion domain walls gain spontaneous magnetization in early universe by trapping either electrons or positrons with their spins polarized. The reason is that the walls produces an attractive potential for these particles. We…

Assuming that the early universe had (i) a description using perturbative string theory and its field theory limit (ii) an epoch of slow-roll inflation within a four-dimensional effective field theory and a hierarchy of scales $M_{inf} <…

We show that stable local cosmic strings are a generic prediction of supersymmetric models where supersymmetry is broken at scales within a few orders of magnitude of the weak scale and is fed down to the observable sector by gauge…

The damping of the axionic string motion due to the surrounding plasma is estimated by a detailed calculation of the fermion scatter from a global string and it is shown that the friction force on the string can be neglected before the…

It has long been known that strings wound around incontractible cycles can play a vital role in cosmology. In particular, in a spacetime with toroidal spatial hypersurfaces, the dynamics of the winding modes may help yield three large…

Stable ring solutions supported by the angular momentum caused by superconducting charge and current have been suggested to exist in the gauged $U(1)\times U(1)$ field theory. We construct potentially cosmologically relevant solutions using…

Chiral cosmic strings naturally arise in many particle physics models, in particular in supersymmetric theories with a D-term. These strings have a single fermion zero mode in the core. We derive the general equation of motion for such…

A strongly-coupled sector can feature a supercooled confinement transition in the early universe. We point out that, when fundamental quanta of the strong sector are swept into expanding bubbles of the confined phase, the distance between…

We examine the effects of cosmic strings on structure formation and on the ionization history of the universe. While Gaussian perturbations from inflation are known to provide the dominant contribution to the large scale structure of the…

Gravitational waves (GWs) provide a powerful probe of the early universe due to their ability to free-stream across cosmic history. We study GW production in a compelling scenario where a rotating axion(-like) field becomes relevant for a…

These relics from the early universe could be the answer to many astrophysical conundrums.

We analyze all individual cosmic strings of various lengths in a large ensemble of the global cosmic string networks in the post-inflationary scenario, obtained from numerical simulations on a discrete lattice with $N^3 = 4096^3$. A strong…

In certain models of a QCD axion, finite density corrections to the axion potential can result in the axion being sourced by large dense objects. There are a variety of ways to test this phenomenon, but perhaps the most surprising effect is…

We show how an effective field theory of long distance QCD, describing a dual superconductor, can be expressed as an effective string theory of superconducting vortices. We use the semiclassical expansion of this effective string theory…

Understanding axion cosmology has important experimental consequences since it constrains the range of allowed values for the axion mass. In the standard thermal scenario, which assumes Peccei-Quinn symmetry restoration after inflation, an…

We examine the collapse of an axion domain wall bounded by an axionic string. It is found that the collapse proceeds quickly and axion domain walls disappear. However axions are emitted in the collapse and its energy density increases…