Related papers: Dynamical Prevention of Topological Defect Formati…
In cosmological first-order phase transitions, the progress of true-vacuum bubbles is expected to be significantly retarded by the interaction between the bubble wall and the hot plasma. It has been claimed that this leads to a significant…
The nature of axion cosmology is usually said to depend on whether the Peccei-Quinn (PQ) symmetry breaks before or after inflation. The PQ symmetry itself is believed to be an accident, so there is not necessarily a symmetry during…
Topological defects can arise in symmetry breaking models where the scalar field potential $V(\phi)$ has no minima and is a monotonically decreasing function of $|\phi|$. The properties of such vacuumless defects are quite different from…
We investigate the global structure of inflationary universe both by analytical methods and by computer simulations of stochastic processes in the early Universe. We show that the global structure of the universe depends crucially on the…
The Peccei-Quinn solution to the strong CP problem provides a motivated framework rich in cosmological consequence. Thermal axion production is unavoidable if there is a thermal bath at early times. Scattering and decay processes of bath…
Many models of supersymmetry breaking involve particles with weak scale mass and Planck mass suppressed couplings. Coherent production of such particles in the early universe destroys the successful predictions of nucleosynthesis. We show…
We consider scalar perturbations of energy--density for a class of cosmological models where an early phase of accelerated expansion evolves, without any fine--tuning for graceful exit, towards the standard Friedman eras of observed…
We show that dissipative effects have a significant impact on the evolution of cosmological scalar fields, leading to friction, entropy production and field fluctuations. We explicitly compute the dissipation coefficient for different…
Doppler peaks in the cosmic microwave background may allow us to distinguish among the two classes of theories-inflationary models and topological defect scenarios-which attempt to explain the origin of structure formation in the universe.…
We consider scalar perturbations of energy-density for a class of cosmological models where an early phase of accelerated expansion evolves, without any fine-tuning for graceful exit, towards the standard Friedman eras of observed universe.…
We discuss the structure of topological defects in the context of extra dimensions where the symmetry breaking terms are localized. These defects develop structure in the extra dimension which differs from the case where symmetry breaking…
The cosmological abundance of dark matter can be significantly influenced by the temperature dependence of particle masses and vacuum expectation values. We illustrate this point in three simple freeze-in models. The first one, which we…
Supersymmetric extensions of the standard model generically predict that in the early universe a scalar condensate can form and fragment into Q-balls before decaying. If the Q-balls dominate the energy density for some period of time, the…
We revisit the cosmological aspects of axion models. In the high-scale inflation scenario, the Peccei-Quinn (PQ) symmetry is likely to be restored during/after inflation. If the curvature of the PQ scalar potential at the origin is smaller…
We investigate the effects of large scalar inhomogeneities during the kination epoch, a period in which the universe's dynamics are dominated by the kinetic energy of a scalar field, by fully evolving the Einstein equations using numerical…
We show that supersymmetric axion models breaking the PQ symmetry by the interplay of non-renormalizable supersymmetric terms and soft supersymmetry breaking terms provide a natural framework not only for generating the axion scale from…
We discuss formation of cosmic strings associated with a spontaneously broken approximate $U(1)$ symmetry by performing classical field-theoretical simulations. An original $U(1)$ symmetry is explicitly broken down to its subgroup $Z_N$…
A wide class of inflationary models, known as Hybrid Inflation models, may produce topological defects during a phase transition at the end of the inflationary epoch. We point out that, if the energy scale of these defects is close to that…
We discuss gravitational effects of global scalar fields and, especially, of global topological defects. We first give an introduction to the dynamics of global fields and the formation of defects. Next we investigate the induced…
Currently favoured extensions of the Standard Model typically contain `flaton fields' defined as fields with large vacuum expectation values (vevs) and almost flat potentials. If a flaton field is trapped at the origin in the early…