Related papers: Cosmic Superstrings Stabilized by Fermions
In the standard model, stabilization of a classically unstable cosmic string may occur through the quantum fluctuations of a heavy fermion doublet. We review numerical results from a semiclassical expansion in a reduced version of the…
We provide a thorough exposition of recent results on the quantum stabilization of cosmic strings. Stabilization occurs through the coupling to a heavy fermion doublet in a reduced version of the standard model. The study combines the…
We provide a thorough exposition, including technical and numerical details, of previously published results on the quantum stabilization of cosmic strings. Stabilization occurs through the coupling to a heavy fermion doublet in a reduced…
Cosmic strings in realistic particle physics models have fermion zero modes in the string core. Such zero modes change the underlying cosmology; for example, the string can carry a current. We consider the stability of fermion zero modes to…
We study the quantum stabilization of a cosmic string by a heavy fermion doublet in a reduced version of the standard model. We show that charged strings, obtained by populating fermionic bound state levels, become stable if the…
We compute fermion quantum corrections to the energy of cosmic strings. A number of rather technical tools is needed to formulate this correction and we employ isospin and gauge invariance to verify consistency of these tools. These…
Recent developments in string theory suggest that cosmic strings could be formed at the end of brane inflation. Supergravity provides a realistic model to study the properties of strings arising in brane inflation. Whilst the properties of…
We show that the electroweak $Z-$string can be stabilized by the presence of bound states of a complex scalar field. We argue that fermions coupled to the scalar field of the string can also make the string stable and discuss the physical…
The equation of state for a superconducting cosmic string whose current is due to fermionic zero modes is derived analytically in the case where the back-reaction of the fermions to the background is neglected. It is first shown that the…
The influence on cosmic string dynamics of fermionic massive bound states propagating in the vortex, and getting their mass only from coupling to the string forming Higgs field, is studied. Such massive fermionic currents are numerically…
We consider the 1-loop effective potential in type I string theory compactified on a torus, with supersymmetry broken by the Scherk-Schwarz mechanism. At fixed supersymmetry breaking scale M, and up to exponentially suppressed terms, we…
Grand unified theories can admit cosmic strings with fermion zero modes. Such zero modes result in the string being current-carrying and the formation of stable remnants, vortons. However, the string zero modes do not automaticall survive…
We investigate the stability of superconducting strings as bound states of strings and fermion zero modes at both the classical and quantum levels. The dynamics of these superconducting strings can result in a stable configuration, known as…
We consider a toroidal configuration of cosmic string in 3+1 dimensions in an abelian Higgs model, a compactification of the Nielsen-Olesen string. This object is classically unstable. We explicitly compute the number of permitted zero…
We study the spectrum of fermionic modes on cosmic string loops. We find no fermionic zero modes nor massive bound states - this implies that vortons stabilized by fermionic currents do not exist. We have also studied kink-(anti)kink and…
The stability of fermionic charge carriers on cosmic strings is considered. We show that neutral fermion currents in cosmic strings are always chiral or time-like, in contrast to the case of bosonic currents. The spectrum of bound states on…
The Standard Model is the low-energy limit of a microscopic theory which includes extra dimensions and new symmetries. A part of my thesis consisted in constructing a new class of models with two extra dimensions. We showed that these…
In string bit models, the superstring emerges as a very long chain of "bits", in which s fermionic degrees of freedom contribute positively to the ground state energy in a way to exactly cancel the destabilizing negative contributions of…
The perturbative analysis of models of open and closed superstrings presents a number of surprises. For instance, variable numbers of antisymmetric tensors ensure their consistency via generalized Green-Schwarz cancellations and a novel…
We investigate the stability of the electroweak Z-string at high temperatures. Our results show that while finite temperature corrections can improve the stability of the Z-string, their effect is not strong enough to stabilize the Z-string…