Related papers: The No-defect Conjecture: Cosmological Implication…
Although the cubic T^3 "small universe" has been ruled out by COBE/DMR results as an interesting cosmological model, we still have the possibility of living in a universe with a more anisotropic topology such as a rectangular T^3 "small…
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…
We present an update to the search for a non-trivial topology of the universe by searching for matching circle pairs in the cosmic microwave background using the WMAP 7 year data release. We extend the exisiting bounds to encompass a wider…
Despite our present-day inability to predict the topology of the universe it is expected that we should be able to detect it in the near future. A nontrivial detectable topology of the space section of the universe can be probed for all…
The origin of the large scale structure in the universe - galaxies, quasars, clusters, voids, sheets - is one of the most important questions in cosmology. One can show that some non-thermal energy density fluctuations must have been…
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…
We study topological defects with a general structure in higher-dimensional cosmological backgrounds described by a set of angle deficit parameters. As special cases, they include higher-dimensional generalizations of cosmic strings and…
Many theories of the early universe predict the existence of a multiverse where bubbles continuously nucleate giving rise to observers in their interior. In this paper, we point out that topological defects of several dimensionalities will…
The Cosmic Microwave Background provides our most ancient image of the Universe and our best tool for studying its early evolution. Theories of high energy physics predict the formation of various types of topological defects in the very…
Multiply connected space sections of the universe on a scale smaller than the horizon size can leave an imprint on cosmic microwave background polarization maps, in such a way that the so-called ``circles-in-the-sky'' method can be used to…
The concordance model of cosmology predicts a universe which finishes in a finite amount of conformal time at a future conformal boundary. We show that for particular cases we study, the background variables and perturbations may be…
The existence of a scaling evolution for cosmic string loops in an expanding universe is demonstrated for the first time by means of numerical simulations. In contrast with what is usually assumed, this result does not rely on any…
The recent high-quality measurements of the Cosmic Microwave Background anisotropies have presented cosmologists with the possibility of studying the large scale properties of our universe with unprecedented precision. Here I review the…
Few years ago, Cho and Vilenkin have proposed that topological defects can arise in symmetry breaking models without having degenerate vacua. These types of defects are known as vacuumless defects. In the present work, the gravitational…
The possibility that the energy density of the Universe is dominated by a network of low-tension domain walls provides an alternative to the commonly discussed cosmological constant and scalar-field quintessence models of dark energy. We…
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 reexamine the possibility of the detection of the cosmic topology in nearly flat hyperbolic Friedmann-Lemaitre-Robertson-Walker (FLRW) universes by using patterns repetition. We update and extend our recent results in two important ways:…
Discrete symmetries are commonplace in field theoretical models but pose a severe problem for cosmology since they lead to the formation of domain walls during spontaneous symmetry breaking in the early universe. However if one of the…
As is well known, classical General Relativity does not constrain the topology of the spatial sections of our Universe. However, the Brane-World approach to cosmology might be expected to do so, since in general any modification of the…
Much of modern cosmology relies on the Cosmological Principle, the assumption that the Universe is isotropic and homogeneous on sufficiently large scales, but it remains worthwhile to examine cosmological models that violate this principle…