Related papers: Astrophysical Bounds on Global 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…
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…
Topological defects are involved in a plethora of physical and astrophysical phenomena. In these lectures, I will review the r\^ ole they could play in the large-scale structure formation and the anisotropies of the cosmic microwave…
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…
In this paper we will discuss how cosmic strings can be used to bridge the gap between the local geometry of our spacetime model and the global topology. The primary tool is the theory of foliations and surfaces, and together with…
The number of cosmic strings in the observable universe is relevant in determining the probability of detecting such cosmic defects through their gravitational signatures. In particular, we refer to the observation of gravitational lensing…
Cosmic strings are generic cosmological predictions of many extensions of the Standard Model of particle physics, such as a $U(1)^\prime$ symmetry breaking phase transition in the early universe or remnants of superstring theory. Unlike…
Effects invoked by the passage of the cosmic string through the Earth are investigated. The cosmic string induces global oscillations of the Earth whose amplitude and acceleration both linearly depend on the string line density. For the…
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…
The possibility to detect cosmic strings -- topological defects of early Universe, by means of wave effects in gravitational lensing is discussed. To find the optimal observation conditions, we define the hyperbolic-shaped Fresnel…
Global cosmic strings are generically predicted in particle physics beyond the Standard Model, e.g., a post-inflationary global $U(1)$ symmetry breaking which may associate with axion-like dark matter. We demonstrate that although…
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…
Making use of the wealth of new observational data coming from the sky it is possible to constrain particle physics theories beyond the Standard Model. One way to do this is illustrated in this article: a subset of theories admits cosmic…
We discuss gravitational effects of global scalar fields and, especially, of global topological defects. We first give an introduction to the dynamics of global fields and the formation of defects. Next we investigate the induced…
The gravitational field of monopoles, cosmic strings and domain walls is studied in the quadratic gravitational theory $R+\alpha R^2$ with $\alpha |R|\ll 1$, and is compared with the result in Einstein's theory. The metric aquires…
From theoretical point of view and not being in contradiction with current observational data, the cosmic strings should have fundamentally different origin and are characterized by wide range of energies. The paper is devoted to search for…
We study the behaviour and consequences of cosmic string networks in contracting universes. They approximately behave during the collapse phase as a radiation fluids. Scaling solutions describing this are derived and tested against…
We study the behaviour of cosmic string networks in contracting universes, and discuss some of their possible consequences. We note that there is a fundamental time asymmetry between defect network evolution for an expanding universe and a…
When the topology of the universe is non trivial, it has been shown that there are constraints on the network of domain walls, cosmic strings and monopoles. I generalize these results to textures and study the cosmological implications of…