Related papers: Cosmic strings from pure Yang-Mills theory
We discuss the formation of cosmic strings or macroscopic color flux tubes after the deconfinement/confinement phase transition in the pure Yang-Mills theory. Based on holographic dual descriptions, these cosmic strings can be interpreted…
We study some features of the confining string connecting a quark-anti-quark pair in Yang-Mills theory. Monte Carlo investigations of the flux tube between two static quarks in the fundamental representation show that its thickness…
We point out that SO($2N$) pure Yang-Mills theory provides a candidate for dark matter (DM) without the explicit need to impose any additional symmetry. The DM candidate is a particular type of glueball, which we refer to as a baryonic…
In $SU(N)$ Yang-Mills theory without matter, there exist stable long electric fluxtube strings which carry a 1-form symmetry charge. Over the past decade or so, there has been increasing evidence from lattice calculations that the…
We investigate cosmic strings arising from a hierarchical gauge symmetry breaking sequence, $\mathrm{SU}(2) \times \mathrm{U}(1) \rightarrow \mathrm{U}(1) \times \mathrm{U}(1) \rightarrow \mathrm{U}(1)' \rightarrow \text{Nothing}$. This…
We study decoupling limits and S-dualities for noncommutative open string/ Yang-Mills theory in a gravity setup by considering an $SL(2,Z)$ invariant supergravity solution of the form ((F, D1), D3) bound state of type IIB string theory.…
Cosmic strings are predicted by many field-theory models, and may have been formed at a symmetry-breaking transition early in the history of the universe, such as that associated with grand unification. They could have important…
Cosmic strings are linear concentrations of energy that may be formed at phase transitions in the very early universe. At one time they were thought to provide a possible origin for the density inhomogeneities from which galaxies eventually…
Exploiting insights on strings moving in pp-wave backgrounds, we show how open strings emerge from N = 4 SU(M) Yang-Mills theory as fluctuations around certain states carrying R-charge of order M. These states are dual to spherical…
Dark Yang-Mills sectors, which are ubiquitous in the string landscape, may be reheated above their critical temperature and subsequently go through a confining first-order phase transition that produces stochastic gravitational waves in the…
We show that two-dimensional SO(N) and Sp(N) Yang-Mills theories without fermions can be interpreted as closed string theories. The terms in the 1/N expansion of the partition function on an orientable or nonorientable manifold M can be…
We study the physics of open strings in bosonic and type II string theories in the presence of unstable D-branes. When the potential energy of the open string tachyon is at its minimum, Sen has argued that only closed strings remain in 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 low energy physics of M theory near certain singularities of $G_2$-holonomy spacetimes can be described by pure N=1 super Yang-Mills theory in four dimensions. In this note we consider the cases when the gauge group is SO(2n), E6, E7 or…
In these lectures I discuss the possibility that superstrings of cosmic length might exist and be observable. I first review the original idea of cosmic strings arising as gauge theory solitons, and discuss in particular their network…
We investigate the velocity-dependent one-scale (VOS) model to the case of one cosmic F-string and two D-strings as color flux tubes in pure Spin($4N$) gauge theory. We analytically calculate the scaling string density as a function of the…
In U(1) lattice gauge theory in three spacetime dimensions, the problem of confinement can be studied analytically in a semi-classical approach, in terms of a gas of monopoles with Coulomb-like interactions. In addition, this theory can be…
We study the formation of cosmic strings by confining a stochastic magnetic field into flux tubes in a numerical simulation. We use overdamped evolution in a potential that is minimized when the flux through each face in the simulation…
In earlier work we proposed a string theory dual to two dimensional Yang-Mills theory at zero coupling (which can also be thought of as a $BF$ theory), given by a Polyakov-like generalization of Ho\v rava's topological rigid string theory,…
We provide a detailed analysis of the gravitational wave spectrum of $SU(N)$ pure Yang-Mills theory. The confinement phase transition is described with an effective Polyakov loop model, using the latest lattice data as an input. In…