Related papers: String-induced vacuum decay and its gravitational …
It is argued that quantum states of geometry, like those of particles, should be coherent on light cones of any size. An exact classical solution, the gravitational shock wave of a relativistic point particle, is used to estimate…
We explain simple semi-classical rules to estimate the lifetime of any given highly-excited quantum state of the string spectrum in flat spacetime. We discuss both the decays by splitting into two massive states and by massless emission. As…
Gravitational and massless particle radiation of straight cosmic strings with finite thickness is studied analytically. It is found that the non-linear interaction of the radiation fields emitted by a cosmic string with the ones of the…
In many interesting models, including superstring theories, a negative vacuum energy is predicted. Although this effect is usually regarded as undesirable from a cosmological point of view, we show that this can be the basis for a new…
A metastable cosmic-string network is a generic consequence of many grand unified theories (GUTs) when combined with cosmic inflation. Metastable cosmic strings are not topologically stable, but decay on cosmic time scales due to pair…
We consider the propagation of classical and quantum strings on cosmological space-times which interpolate from a collapsing phase to an expanding phase. We begin by considering the classical propagation of strings on space-times with…
Starting with exact solutions to string theory on curved spacetimes we obtain deformations that represent gravitational shock waves. These may exist in the presence or absence of sources. Sources are effectively induced by a tachyon field…
We have studied numerically the evolution and decay of axion strings. These global defects decay mainly by axion emission and thus contribute to the cosmological axion density. The relative importance of this source relative to misalignment…
We present a nonsupersymmetric orbifold of type II string theory and show that it has vanishing cosmological constant at the one and two loop level. We argue heuristically that the cancellation persists at higher loops.
We study the gravitational collapse of a rotating cylindrical null shell with flat interior and the metric of a spinning cosmic string as the exterior. We see that there is a critical radius, where the energy density of the shell vanishes…
We conjecture that all vacua in string theory decay. More precisely, non-supersymmetric vacua in string theory are at most metastable and eventually decay, while supersymmetric vacua are only marginally stable. All de Sitter vacua with…
The empirical mass of the Higgs boson suggests small to vanishing values of the quartic Higgs self--coupling and the corresponding beta function at the Planck scale, leading to degenerate vacua. This leads us to suggest that the measured…
We undertake a careful analysis of stochastic gravitational wave production from cosmological phase transitions in an expanding universe, studying both a standard radiation as well as a matter dominated history. We analyze in detail the…
The decay constant of the QCD axion is required by observation to be small compared to the Planck scale. In theories of "natural inflation," and certain proposed anthropic solutions of the cosmological constant problem, it would be…
The main goal of string phenomenology is to find realistic models of particle physics and cosmology within string theory. Dark bubble cosmology is an alternative to string compactifications, where our universe lives on a bubble expanding in…
We show that if a cosmic string exists, it may be identified through characteristic diffraction pattern in the energy spectrum of the observed signal. In particular, if the string is on the line of sight, the wave field is shown to fit the…
A non-singular bouncing cosmology is generically obtained in loop quantum cosmology due to non-perturbative quantum gravity effects. A similar picture can be achieved in standard general relativity in the presence of a scalar field with a…
In the context of a string-inspired running vacuum model (RVM) of cosmology with anomalies and torsion-induced axion-like fields, we discuss quantum corrections to the corresponding energy density, in approximately de Sitter eras, during…
We construct cosmological spacetimes with null Kasner-like singularities as purely gravitational solutions with no other background fields turned on. These can be recast as anisotropic plane-wave spacetimes by coordinate transformations. We…
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…