Related papers: The Doppler peaks from a generic defect
Cosmological perturbations, originating in the quantum fluctuations of the fields that drive inflation, are observed to be nearly scale invariant at the largest scales. At smaller scales, however, perturbations are not severely constrained…
We consider two-dimensional (2d) quantum many-body systems with long-range orders, where the only gapless excitations in the spectrum are Goldstone modes of spontaneously broken continuous symmetries. To understand the interplay between…
Causal seed models, such as cosmological defects, generically predict a distinctly different structure to the CMB power spectrum than inflation, due to the behavior of the perturbations outside the horizon. We provide a general analysis of…
Global topological defects may account for the large cold spot observed in the Cosmic Microwave Background. We explore possibilities of constructing models of supersymmetric F-term hybrid inflation, where the waterfall fields are globally…
An introduction to topological defects in cosmology is given. We discuss their possible relevance for structure formation. Especial emphasis is given on the signature of topological defects in the spectrum of anisotropies in the cosmic…
Inflation arises in supersymmetric grand unified theories (susy GUTs) without fine tuning and cosmic strings usually form at the end of inflation. Hence both strings and inflation contribute to the density perturbations in the very early…
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…
A scenario with two subsequent periods of inflationary expansion in the very early universe is examined. The model is based on a potential motivated by symmetries being found in field theory at high energy. For various parameter sets of the…
In the present work we discuss cosmic strings in natural inflation. Our analysis is based entirely on the CMB quadrupole temperature anisotropy and on the existing upper bound on the cosmic string tension. Our results show that the allowed…
We investigate thermal inflation in double-screen entropic cosmology. We find that its realization is general, resulting from the system evolution from non-equilibrium to equilibrium. Furthermore, going beyond the background evolution, we…
In supersymmetric theories, topological defects can have nontrivial behaviors determined purely by whether or not supersymmetry is restored in the defect core. A well-known example of this is that some supersymmetric cosmic strings are…
We investigate which experiments are better suited to test the robust prediction that cosmic strings do not produce secondary Doppler peaks. We propose a statistic for detecting oscillations in the $C^l$ spectrum, and study its statistical…
A four-dimensional universe, arising from a flux compactification of Type IIB string theory, contains scalar fields with a potential determined by topological and geometric parameters of the internal -hidden- dimensions. We show that…
We present a simplified review of inflationary cosmology across various modified gravity theories. These include models based on curvature, torsion, and non-metricity. We explore how scalar fields interact with different geometric…
We point out that in the context of ``two-metric'' theories of gravity there is the possibility that cosmic defects will produce a spectrum of primordial adiabatic density perturbations. This will happen when the speed characterising the…
We discuss metric perturbations produced during a period of inflation in the early universe where two scalar fields evolve. The final scalar perturbation spectrum can be calculated in terms of the perturbed expansion along neighbouring…
Signatures of heavy particles during inflation are exponentially suppressed by the Boltzmann factor when the masses are far above the Hubble scale. In more realistic scenarios, however, scale-dependent features may change this conventional…
We study the observable implications of an incomplete first order phase transition during inflation. In such a phase transition, the nucleated bubbles do not percolate and instead are continuously produced until the onset of reheating. The…
When cosmic strings are formed during inflation, they regrow to reach a scaling regime, leaving distinct imprints on the stochastic gravitational wave background (SGWB). Such signatures, associated with specific primordial features, can be…
A mechanism for generating metric perturbations in inflationary models is considered. Long-wavelength inhomogeneities of light scalar fields in a decoupled sector may give rise to superhorizon fluctuations of couplings and masses in the…