Related papers: Testing cosmological defect formation in the labor…
Topological defects are thought to be left behind by the cosmological phase transitions which occur as the universe expands and cools. Similar processes can be studied in the phase transitions which take place in the laboratory:…
The topic of cosmic strings provides a bridge between the physics of the very small and the very large. They are predicted by some unified theories of particle interactions. If they exist, they may help to explain some of the largest-scale…
Topological defects are ubiquitous in condensed-matter physics but only hypothetical in the early universe. In spite of this, even an indirect evidence for one of these cosmic objects would revolutionize our vision of the cosmos. We give…
Topological defects are ubiquitous in physics. Whenever a symmetry breaking phase transition occurs, topological defects may form. The best known examples are vortex lines in type II super conductors or in liquid Helium, and declination…
Topological defects, in particular cosmic strings, give rise to an interesting mechanism for generating the primordial perturbations in the early Universe which are required to explain the present structure. An overview of the cosmic string…
We investigate the mechanism by which topological defects form in first order phase transitions with a charged order parameter. We show how thick superconductor vortices and heavy cosmic strings form by trapping of magnetic flux. In an…
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…
The potential role of cosmic topological defects has raised interest in the astrophysical community for many years now. In this set of notes, we give an introduction to the subject of cosmic topological defects and some of their possible…
Current theories of particle physics lead to the unavoidable conclusion that there must have been several phase transitions in the early universe. Further, in the context of these theories, it is possible that cosmological phase transitions…
Topological defects arise in a variety of systems, e.g. vortices in superfluid helium to cosmic strings in the early universe. There is an indirect evidence of neutron superfluid vortices from glitches in pulsars. One also expects that…
Topological defects are produced during phase transitions in the very early Universe. They arise in most unified theories of strong, weak and electromagnetic interactions. These lectures focus on the role of topological defects in…
We review recent simulations of the formation of a particular class of non-topological defects known as semilocal strings during a phase transition. Semilocal strings have properties that are intermediate between topological 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…
Symmetry-breaking phase transitions are ubiquitous in condensed matter systems and in quantum field theories. There is also good reason to believe that they feature in the very early history of the Universe. At many such transitions…
In these lectures, I review cosmological phase transitions and the topological aspects of spontaneous symmetry breaking. I then discuss the formation of walls, strings and monopoles during phase transitions including lattice based studies…
Kibble and Zurek have provided a unifying causal picture for the appearance of topological defects like cosmic strings or vortices at the onset of phase transitions in relativistic QFT and condensed matter systems respectively. There is no…
Superconductors are the only experimentally accessible systems with spontaneously broken gauge symmetries which support topologically nontrivial defects, namely string defects. We propose two experiments whose aim is the observation of the…
Topological defects are common in many everyday systems. In general, they appear if a symmetry is broken at a rapid phase transition. In this article, I explain why it is believed that they should have also been formed in the early universe…
In these lectures, I describe the formation of defect distributions in first-order phase transitions, then briefly discuss the relevance of defect interactions after a phase transition and the observational signatures of cosmic strings.…
Cosmological inflation and topological defects have been considered for a long time, either in disagreement or in competition. On the one hand an inflationary era is required to solve the shortcomings of the hot big bang model, while on the…