Related papers: String Cosmology: A Review
Cosmic strings are predicted by many field-theory models, and may have been formed at a symmetry-breaking transition early in the history of the universe, such as that associated with grand unification. They could have important…
The implications of string theory for understanding the dimension of uncompactified spacetime are investigated. Using recent ideas in string cosmology, a new model is proposed to explain why three spatial dimensions grew large. Unlike the…
In the past three years our views on how the standard model of particle physics could be embedded into string theory have dramatically changed. The heterotic string is no longer the only possibility for such an embedding and other…
Superunification underwent a major paradigm shift in 1984 when eleven-dimensional supergravity was knocked off its pedestal by ten-dimensional superstrings. This last year has witnessed a new shift of equal proportions: perturbative…
Cosmic strings provide a radically different paradigm for the formation of structure to the prevailing inflationary one. They afford some extra technical complications: for example, the calculation of the power spectrum of matter and…
Cosmic strings are one-dimensional topological defects which could have been formed in the early stages of our Universe. They triggered a lot of interest, mainly for their cosmological implications: they could offer an alternative to…
There have been many remarkable developments in our understanding of superstring theory in the past few years, a period that has been described as ``the second superstring revolution.'' Several of them are discussed here. The presentation…
Cosmic strings are linear concentrations of energy that form whenever phase transitions in the early universe break axial symmetries as originally shown by Kibble. They are the result of frustrated order in the quantum fields responsible…
The purpose of this review is to discuss recent developments occurring at the interface of cosmology with string and M-theory. We begin with a short review of 1980s string cosmology and the Brandenberger-Vafa mechanism for explaining…
Recent developments in string theory have important implications for cosmology. Topics discussed here are inflation, the cosmological constant, smoothing of cosmological singularities, and dark matter from parallel universes. Talk presented…
We consider new cosmological solutions with a collapsing, an intermediate and an expanding phase. The boundary between the expanding (collapsing) phase and the intermediate phase is seen by comoving observers as a cosmological past (future)…
String and field theory ideas have greatly influenced each other since the so called second string revolution. We review this interrelation paying particular attention to its phenomenological implications. Our guiding principle is the…
The recent developments in string theory suggest that the space-time coordinates should be generalized to non-commuting matrices. Postulating this suggestion as the fundamental geometrical principle, we formulate a candidate for covariant…
Recent developments in superstring theory have led to major advances in understanding. After reviewing where things stood earlier, we sketch the impact of recently identified dualities and D-branes, as well as a hidden eleventh dimension.
In this paper we extend the Cosmological Constant Seesaw treatment of hep-th/0602112 to String/M-Theory where the cosmological constant is finite. We discuss how transitions between different $\lambda$, one of Planckian vacuum energy, can…
This is a short account, based on a talk given at the 2024 Moriond Cosmology Conference, of where and why string theory matters in early universe cosmology. It is written for a cosmology audience predisposed to be at best sceptical, and at…
We review recent developments in the field of string cosmology with particular emphasis on open problems having to do mainly with geometric asymptotics and singularities. We discuss outstanding issues in a variety of currently popular…
We review applications of string theory to cosmology, from primordial times to the present-day accelerated expansion. Starting with a brief overview of cosmology and string compactifications, we discuss in detail moduli stabilisation,…
We critically assess the twin prospects of describing the observed universe in string theory, and using cosmological experiments to probe string theory. For the purposes of this short review, we focus on the limitations imposed by our…
The interplay between string theory and cosmology is very promising. Since string theory will yield a quantum theory of space-time and unify all forces of nature, it has the potential of addressing many of the conceptual problems of the…