Related papers: Cosmic strings in the complex symmetron model
We study the deformation of a long cosmic string by a nearby rotating black hole. We examine whether the deformation of a cosmic string, induced by the gravitational field of a Kerr black hole, may lead to the formation of a loop of cosmic…
The dynamics of cosmic strings is considered in anisotropic backgrounds. In particular, the behaviour of infinitely long straight cosmic strings and of cosmic string loops is determined. Small perturbations of a straight cosmic string are…
The weakly coupled vacuum of $E_8\otimes E_8$ heterotic string theory remains an attractive scenario for phenomenolgy and cosmology. The particle spectrum is reviewed and the issues of gauge coupling unification, dilaton stabilization and…
Metastable cosmic strings provide a minimal and predictive origin for the stochastic gravitational-wave background reported by Pulsar Timing Array experiments. We analyse this possibility in electroweak-like dark sectors with a single-stage…
We report on a large scale numerical study of networks of semilocal cosmic strings in flat space in the parameter regime in which they are perturbatively stable. We find a population of segments with an exponential length distribution and…
Cosmic (super)strings offer promising ways to test ideas about the early universe and physics at high energies. While in field theory constructions their tension is usually assumed to be constant (or at most slowly-varying), this is often…
Cosmic strings in the early universe have received revived interest in recent years. In this paper we derive these structures as topological defects from singular distributions of the quintessence field of dark energy. Our emphasis is…
A full quantum description of global vortex strings is presented in the framework of a pure Higgs system with a broken global U(1) symmetry in 3+1D. An explicit expression for the string creation operator is obtained, both in terms of the…
Persisting tensions between high-redshift and low-redshift cosmological observations suggest the dark energy sector of the Universe might be more complex than the positive cosmological constant of the $\Lambda$CDM model. Motivated by string…
Cosmic strings, a hot subject in the 1980's and early 1990's, lost its appeal when it was found that it leads to inconsistencies in the power spectrum of the measured cosmic microwave background temperature anisotropies. However,…
The Standard Model is the low-energy limit of a microscopic theory which includes extra dimensions and new symmetries. A part of my thesis consisted in constructing a new class of models with two extra dimensions. We showed that these…
In the modified measure formulation the string tension appear as an additional dynamical degree of freedom and these tensions are not universal, but rather each string generates its own tension, which can have a different value for each…
We review various aspects of de Sitter spacetime in string theory: its status as an effective field theory spacetime solution, its relation to the vacuum energy problem in string theory, its (global) holographic definition in terms of two…
The gravitational properties of a local cosmic string in the framework of scalar-tensor gravity are examined. We find the metric in the weak-field approximation and we show that, contrary to the General Relativity case, the cosmic string in…
We compute the power spectra in the cosmic microwave background and cold dark matter (CDM) fluctuations seeded by strings, using the largest string simulations performed so far to evaluate the two-point functions of their stress energy…
It has recently been argued that string theory does not admit de Sitter vacua. This would imply that the current accelerated expansion of the universe is not driven by a cosmological constant (or vacuum energy) but by other means such as a…
Cosmic strings are predicted in many models beyond the Standard Model of particle physics. In models which admit strings, a network of strings will inevitably be formed in a phase transition in the early universe and will persist to the…
We study both global as well as local (Nielsen-Olesen) strings in de Sitter space. While these type of topological defects have been studied in the background of a de Sitter metric previously, we study here the full set of coupled…
The symmetron is a scalar field associated with the dark sector whose coupling to matter depends on the ambient matter density. The symmetron is decoupled and screened in regions of high density, thereby satisfying local constraints from…
A brief discussion is presented assessing the achievements and challenges of string phenomenology: the subfield dedicated to study the potential for string theory to make contact with particle physics and cosmology. Building from the well…