Related papers: Topological structures, dark matter and gravitatio…
We review recent simulations of the formation of a particular class of non-topological defects known as semilocal strings during a phase transition. Semilocal strings have properties that are intermediate between topological cosmic strings…
In this work, we propose a novel realization of $\textit{type-I}$ cosmic strings arising from the spontaneous breaking of an extended gauge symmetry $SU(2)_R\times U(1)_{B-L}$ in the context of a low-scale split seesaw mechanism for…
Cosmic strings, theoretical one-dimensional topological defects from the early universe, provide a valuable opportunity for exploring dark matter (DM) production and gravitational wave (GW) emission. Our study investigates the production of…
We study the formation and evolution of topological defects in an aligned axion model with multiple Peccei-Quinn scalars, where the QCD axion is realized by a certain combination of the axions with decay constants much smaller than the…
Metastable cosmic strings (MSCSs) are among the best-fitting explanations of the 2023 pulsar timing array (PTA) signal for gravitational waves at nanohertz frequencies. We propose the novel possibility that a network of MSCSs generating…
The stability of "visible" electroweak-type cosmic strings is investigated in an extension of the Standard Model (SM) by a minimal dark sector, consisting of a U(1) gauge field, broken spontaneously by a scalar. The "visible" and dark…
The thermal duality of E(8) x E(8) and SO(32) heterotic string theories may underpin a mechanism that would convert the kinetic energy of infalling matter during gravitational collapse to form a region of a hot string phase that would expel…
In theories of supersymmetry breaking, it is often the case that there is more than one metastable vacuum. First-order phase transitions among such metastable vacua may generate a stochastic background of gravitational waves, the…
Many extensions of the standard model, especially grand unified theories and superstring models, predict the existence of additional Z' bosons and associated exotic chiral supermultiplets. It has recently been argued that for classes of…
Four-dimensional string theories predict in general the existence of light exotic particles with fractional electric charges. Such particles could escape present observations if they are confined by a gauge group of the "hidden" sector into…
We investigate the stability of the electroweak Z-string at high temperatures. Our results show that while finite temperature corrections can improve the stability of the Z-string, their effect is not strong enough to stabilize the Z-string…
Cosmic strings can be created in the early universe during symmetry-breaking phase transitions, such as might arise if the gauge structure of the standard model is extended by additional U(1) factors at high energies. Cosmic strings present…
The supersymmetric flipped $SU(6)\times U(1)$ gauge symmetry can arise through compactification of the ten dimensional $E_8\times E_8$ superstring theory. We show how realistic phenomenology can emerge from this theory by supplementing it…
Making use of the wealth of new observational data coming from the sky it is possible to constrain particle physics theories beyond the Standard Model. One way to do this is illustrated in this article: a subset of theories admits cosmic…
We present the formation of metastable cosmic strings (CSs) in the context of a supersymmetric (SUSY) left-right model. The SU(2)R symmetry breaking occurs during a stage of T-model (Higgs) inflation (TI) driven by an SU(2)R triplet…
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…
In this paper we describe a new type of topological defect, called a homilia string, which is stabilized via interactions with the string network. Using analytical and numerical techniques, we investigate the stability and dynamics of…
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…
One of the simplest extensions of the Standard Model is the Higgs portal extension involving a dark Higgs. Dark sectors that include dark matter candidates, WIMPs, axions, and dark photons, can naturally have this type of interaction, where…
Superconductors are the only experimentally accessible systems with spontaneously broken gauge symmetries which support topologically nontrivial defects, namely string defects. We propose two experiments whose aim is the observation of the…