Related papers: Cosmic optical activity in the spacetime of a scal…
Optical activity of electromagnetic waves in a string inspired Kalb-Ramond cosmological background is studied in presence of extra spacetime dimension. The Kalb-Ramond-electromagnetic coupling which originates from the gauge anomaly…
The recently discovered alignment of quasar polarizations on very large scales could possibly explained by considering cosmic strings on a warped five dimensional spacetime. Compact objects, such as cosmic strings, could have tremendous…
We show that the parametric resonance of gravitational waves occurs due to the axion coherent oscillation and the circular polarization of gravitational waves is induced by the Chern-Simons coupling. However, we have never observed these…
The time-dependent metric of a cosmic string leads to an effective interaction between the string and photons - the "gravitational Aharonov-Bohm" effect -- and causes cosmic strings to emit light. We evaluate the radiation of pairs of…
In this work, we study the effects of breaking Lorentz symmetry in scalar-tensor theories of gravity taking torsion into account. We show that a space-time with torsion interacting with a Maxwell field by means of a Chern-Simons-like term…
We constrain the cosmological density of cosmic string loops using two observational signatures -- gravitational microlensing and the Kaiser-Stebbins effect. Photometry from RXTE and CoRoT space missions and pulsar timing from Parkes Pulsar…
This is a short review on strings in curved spacetimes. We start by recalling the classical and quantum string behaviour in singular plane waves backgrounds. We then report on the string behaviour in cosmological spacetimes (FRW, de Sitter,…
We put robust upper limits on the average cosmological density \Omega_s of cosmic strings based on the variability properties of a large homogeneous sample of SDSS quasars. We search for an excess of characteristic variations of quasar…
String theory suggests the simultaneous presence of many ultralight axions possibly populating each decade of mass down to the Hubble scale 10^-33eV. Conversely the presence of such a plenitude of axions (an "axiverse") would be evidence…
We study the effect of the geometry and topology of a scalar-tensor cosmic string space-time on the electric and magnetic fields of line sources. It is shown that the dilatonic coupling of the gravity induces effects along the string…
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…
Within an effective field theory derived from string theory, the universal axion has to be coupled to the the gravitational Chern-Simons (gCS) term. During any era when the axion field is varying, the vacuum fluctuation of the gravitational…
We study axion strings of hyperlight axions coupled to photons. Hyperlight axions -- axions lighter than Hubble at recombination -- are a generic prediction of the string axiverse. These axions strings produce a distinct quantized…
A solenoid oscillating in vacuum will pair produce charged particles due to the Aharonov-Bohm (AB) interaction. We calculate the radiation pattern and power emitted for charged scalar particles. We extend the solenoid analysis to cosmic…
We consider the signature and detectability of gravitational microlensing of distant quasars by cosmic strings. Because of the simple image configuration such events will have a characteristic light curve, in which a source would appear to…
A tendency for the axes of double-lobed radio quasars to be aligned with the electric vectors of optical polarization in the active galactic nuclei is well-known. However, the origin of the polarization and reason behind its correlation…
We present a novel approach for investigating lens phenomenology of cosmic strings in order to elaborate detection strategies in galaxy deep field images. To account for the complexity of the projected energy distribution of string networks…
It is widely believed that axions are ubiquitous in string theory and could be the dark matter. The peculiar features of the axion dark matter are coherent oscillations and a coupling to the electromagnetic field through the Chern-Simons…
It is well-known that some physical effects may arise in the spacetime of a straigth cosmic string due to its global conic properties. Among these effects, the vacuum polarization effect has been extensively studied in the litterature. In…
We search for stochastic gravitational wave background emitted from cosmic strings using the Parkes Pulsar Timing Array data over 15 years. While we find that the common power-law excess revealed by several pulsar timing array experiments…