Related papers: Observational constraints on cosmic strings: Bayes…
Fluctuations in the intensity and polarization of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) and the large-scale distribution of matter in the universe each contain clues about the nature of the earliest moments of time. The next generation of…
A cosmic string network created during an inflationary stage in the early Universe - here defined as i-string network - is expected to enter a transient stretching regime during inflation, in which its characteristic length is stretched to…
The interplay between string theory and early-universe cosmology offers promising avenues to explore high-energy regimes where the standard single-field slow-roll model may no longer provide an accurate description. One intriguing scenario…
We analyze all individual cosmic strings of various lengths in a large ensemble of the global cosmic string networks in the post-inflationary scenario, obtained from numerical simulations on a discrete lattice with $N^3 = 4096^3$. A strong…
A standard expectation of primordial cosmological inflation is that it dilutes all relics created before its onset to unobservable levels. We present a counterexample to this expectation by demonstrating that a network of cosmic strings…
Cosmic strings are topological defects possibly formed in the early Universe, which may be observable due to their gravitational effects on the cosmic microwave background radiation or gravitational wave experiments. To this effect it is…
Using an analytical model for the string network we show that the kurtosis of cosmic microwave background (CMB) temperature gradient maps is a good statistic to distinguish between the cosmic string model and inflationary models of…
We address the possibility of bounding the spectral index $n$ of primordial density fluctuations, using both the cosmic microwave background (cmb) anisotropy and data on galaxies and clusters. Each piece of galaxy and cluster data is…
As the quality of cosmological data continue to improve, it is natural to test the statistics of primordial fluctuations: are they Gaussian or non-Gaussian? I review a model which generates non-Gaussian adiabatic fluctuations from…
Bursts of particle production during inflation provide a well-motivated mechanism for creating bump like features in the primordial power spectrum. Current data constrains these features to be less than about 5% the size of the featureless…
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…
We examine the two-point correlation function of local maxima in temperature fluctuations at the last scattering surface when this stochastic field is modified by the additional fluctuations produced by straight cosmic strings via the…
We use the present observed number density of large X-ray clusters to constrain the amplitude of matter density perturbations induced by cosmic strings on the scale of $8 h^{-1}$Mpc ($\sigma_8$), in both open cosmologies and flat models…
Standard D-term inflation is studied in the framework of supergravity. D-term inflation produces cosmic strings, however it can still be compatible with CMB measurements without invoking any new physics. The cosmic strings contribution to…
We revisit the problem of constraining steps in the inflationary potential with cosmological data. We argue that a step in the inflationary potential produces qualitatively similar oscillations in the primordial power spectrum,…
Bayesian model comparison penalizes models with more free parameters that are allowed to vary over a wide range, and thus offers the most robust method to decide whether some given data require new parameters. In this paper, we ask a simple…
Recently it has been shown that string gas cosmology, an alternative model of the very early universe which does not involve a period of cosmological inflation, can give rise to an almost scale invariant spectrum of metric perturbations.…
We study the problem of searching for cosmic string signal patterns in the present high resolution and high sensitivity observations of the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB). This article discusses a technique capable of recognizing…
The capability of Cosmic Inflation to explain the latest Cosmic Microwave Background and Baryonic Acoustic Oscillation data is assessed by performing Bayesian model comparison within the landscape of nearly three-hundred models of…
Using an approximate likelihood method adapted to band--power estimates, we analyze the ensemble of first generation cosmic microwave background anisotropy experiments to deduce constraints over a six--dimensional parameter space describing…