Related papers: Biased Domain Walls and the Origin of Early Massiv…
Domain walls form at phase transitions which break discrete symmetries. In a cosmological context they often overclose the universe (contrary to observational evidence), although one may prevent this by introducing biases or forcing…
We show that all kinds of biasing of cosmological phase transitions produce qualitatively new type of domain wall networks. The biased networks consist of compact, finite size, bag-like wall structures and exhibit a generic instability. The…
Domain wall networks in the early universe, formed upon spontaneous breaking of a discrete symmetry, have a rich impact on cosmology. Yet, they remain somewhat unexplored. We introduce a new analytic strategy to understand better the domain…
We study the evolution of biased domain walls in the early universe. We explicitly discuss the roles played by the surface tension and volume pressure in the evolution of the walls, and quantify their effects by looking at the collapse of…
Domain walls are topological defects produced by the spontaneous symmetry-breaking of discrete symmetry during cosmological phase transitions. Domain walls can significantly contribute to the energy density in the late-evolution stage. We…
We consider the possibility that current hints of spatial variations of the fine structure constant at high redshift, based on VLT/UVES and Keck/HIRES observations, could be caused by a biased domain wall network described by a scalar field…
One idea to explain the mysterious dark energy which appears to pervade the Universe is that it is due to a network of domain walls which has frozen into some kind of static configuration, akin to a soap film. Such models predict an…
Cosmological domain walls appear in many well-motivated extensions to the standard model of particle physics. If produced, they quickly enter into a self-similar scaling regime, where they are capable of efficiently sourcing a stochastic…
We study the evolution of domain wall networks appearing after phase transitions in the early Universe. They exhibit interesting dynamical scaling behaviour which is not yet well understood, and are also simple models for the more…
We study the evolution of various types of biased domain wall networks in the early universe. We carry out larger numerical simulations than currently available in the literature and provide a more detailed study of the decay of these…
We give an analytical description of the spatial distribution of domain walls produced during a biased nonequilibrium phase transition in the vacuum state of a light scalar field. We discuss in detail the spectrum of the associated…
In this paper, we study the compatibility of biased domain wall scenarios with current gravitational wave data. We show that the Cosmic Microwave Background bounds on the fractional density of gravitational waves at the time of decoupling…
Domain wall networks have attracted renewed interest, particularly in relation to the dynamics of network collapse. Accurately describing this process is challenging and typically requires large scale numerical simulations. Here we adopt a…
We study the evolution of cosmological domain walls in models with asymmetric potentials. Our research goes beyond the standard case of spontaneous breaking of an approximate symmetry. When the symmetry is explicitly broken the potential…
Topologically protected sheet-like surfaces, called domain walls, form when the potential of a field has a discrete symmetry that is spontaneously broken. Since this condition is commonplace in field theory, it is plausible that many of…
The spontaneous breaking of a discrete symmetry can lead to the formation of domain walls in the early Universe. In this work, we explore the impact of bias directions on the dynamics of $Z_N$ domain walls, mainly focusing on the $N = 3$…
We study the evolution of domain wall networks and their phenomenological implications in a model of a real scalar $\chi$, where a $Z_2$-symmetry is slightly broken by a potential bias $V_{bias}$. It is demonstrated that the latter triggers…
We propose a novel mechanism for the formation of primordial black holes by demonstrating that the delayed production of isocurvature perturbations resulting from Poisson fluctuations within the domain wall network can lead to collapse and…
The breaking of an approximate discrete symmetry, the final stages of a first order phase transition, or a post-inflationary biased probability distribution for scalar fields are possible cosmological scenarios characterized by the presence…
Discrete symmetries are commonplace in field theoretical models but pose a severe problem for cosmology since they lead to the formation of domain walls during spontaneous symmetry breaking in the early universe. However if one of the…