Related papers: Cosmic Strings
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…
Cosmic strings are predicted by many field-theory models, and may have been formed at a symmetry-breaking transition early in the history of the universe, such as that associated with grand unification. They could have important…
In these lectures, I review the current status of cosmic strings and cosmic superstrings. I first discuss topological defects in the context of Grand Unified Theories, focusing in particular in cosmic strings arising as gauge theory…
Cosmic strings are linear concentrations of energy that may be formed at phase transitions in the very early universe. At one time they were thought to provide a possible origin for the density inhomogeneities from which galaxies eventually…
Cosmic strings are linear concentrations of energy that form whenever phase transitions in the early universe break axial symmetries as originally shown by Kibble. They are the result of frustrated order in the quantum fields responsible…
Towards the end of the brane inflationary epoch in the brane world, cosmic strings (but not texture, domain walls or monopoles) are copiously produced during brane collision. These cosmic strings are D$p$-branes with $(p-1)$ dimensions…
Cosmic superstrings are expected to be formed at the end of brane inflation, within the context of brane-world cosmological models inspired from string theory. By studying properties of cosmic suprestring networks, and comparing their…
The cosmic string theory for cosmological fluctuations is a good example of healthy scientific progress in cosmology. It is a well defined physically motivated model that has been tested by cosmological observations and has been ruled out…
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…
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…
At its very beginning, the universe is believed to have grown exponentially in size via the mechanism of inflation. The almost scale-invariant density perturbation spectrum predicted by inflation is strongly supported by cosmological…
The predictions of the inflationary LCDM paradigm match today's high-precision measurements of the cosmic microwave background anisotropy extremely well. The same data put tight limits on other sources of anisotropy. Cosmic strings are a…
Brane inflation in superstring theory predicts that cosmic strings (but not domain walls or monopoles) are produced towards the end of the inflationary epoch. Here, we discuss the production, the spectrum and the evolution of such cosmic…
${\rm B - L}$ cosmic strings form in a wide class of theories beyond the Standard Model which contain a ${\rm U}(1)_{{\rm B - L}}$ gauge symmetry. They can form at the end of hybrid inflation and explain, together with inflation, the Cosmic…
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 investigate a static, cylindrically symmetric cosmic string on the brane without a perturbative approximation. We find there could be a (large) enhancement of the (effective) string tension when the energy density at the center of the…
Brane inflation is a specific realization of the inflationary universe scenario in the early universe within the brane world framework in string theory. The naturalness and robustness of this realistic scenario is explained. Its predictions…
Cosmic strings provide a radically different paradigm for the formation of structure to the prevailing inflationary one. They afford some extra technical complications: for example, the calculation of the power spectrum of matter and…
Cosmic string networks generate cosmological perturbations actively throughout the history of the universe. Thus, the string sourced anisotropy of the cosmic microwave background is not affected by Silk damping as much as the anisotropy…
Cosmology motivated by string theory has been studied extensively in the recent literature. String theory is promising because it has interesting features such as unifying gravity, electromagnetic, weak and strong nuclear forces. However,…