Related papers: GUT cosmic strings and inflation

Motivated by the fact that cosmological perturbations of inflationary quantum origin were born Gaussian, the search for non-Gaussianities in the cosmic microwave background (CMB) anisotropies is considered as the privileged probe of…

In a recent paper, we identified a cosmological sector of a flipped $SU(5)$ model derived in the free fermionic formulation of the heterotic superstring, containing the inflaton and the goldstino superfields with a superpotential leading to…

We consider the abundance of gravitinos created from the vacuum fluctuation, in a class of `new' inflation models for which global supersymmetry is a good approximation. Immediately after inflation, gravitinos are produced, with number…

We study the tilt of the primordial gravitational waves spectrum. A hint of blue tilt is shown from analyzing the BICEP2 and POLARBEAR data. Motivated by this, we explore the possibilities of blue tensor spectra from the very early universe…

Supersymmetry breaking in string theory is expected to occur when moduli fields acquire non-trivial expectation values. In the early universe these fields start out displaced from their final destinations. I present some recent ideas about…

Following inflation, the Universe may pass through an early matter-dominated phase supported by the oscillating inflaton condensate. Initially small fluctuations in the condensate grow gravitationally on subhorizon scales and can collapse…

We propose a simple realization of hybrid inflation in supergravity, which does not require any unnaturally small parameters. Inflation in this scenario is relatively short, and inflationary density perturbations fall down on large scales,…

Inflation driven by a generic self-gravitating medium is an interesting alternative to study the impact of spontaneous spacetime symmetry breaking during a quasi de-Sitter phase, in particular the 4-dimensional diffeomorphism invariance of…

We analyze the gravitational wave signatures of a network of metastable cosmic strings. We consider the case of cosmic string instability to breakage, with no primordial population of monopoles. This scenario is well motivated from GUT and…

An inflationary stage dominated by a $D$-term avoids the slow-roll problem of inflation in supergravity and may emerge in theories with a non-anomalous or anomalous U(1) gauge symmetry. The most intriguing and commonly invoked possibility…

In the context of hybrid inflation at the scale of grand unification, it is shown that, if (some of) the gauge bosons of the unbroken grand unified group obtain a flat superhorizon spectrum of perturbations from inflation they can affect or…

A synthesis of previous work done on the microscopic structure of cosmic strings in realistic models is made and reveals that strings are expected to be not only superconducting in the sense of Witten, but also generically current-carrying,…

We critically review the role of cosmological moduli in determining the post-inflationary history of the universe. Moduli are ubiquitous in string and M-theory constructions of beyond the Standard Model physics, where they parametrize the…

In this review, a number of approaches to superstring cosmology which make use of key features which distinguish string theory from point particle theories are discussed, with particular emphasis on emergent scenarios. One motivation for…

Cosmic strings formed during inflation are expected to be either diluted over super-Hubble distances, i.e., invisible today, or to have crossed our past light cone very recently. We discuss the latter situation in which a few strings…

Metastable cosmic strings (MSCSs) are among the best-fitting explanations of the 2023 pulsar timing array (PTA) signal for gravitational waves at nanohertz frequencies. We propose the novel possibility that a network of MSCSs generating…

We develop a scenario based on $\mu$-hybrid inflation within the framework of a left-right symmetric model defined by the gauge symmetry group $G_{3221} = SU(3)_c \times SU(2)_L \times SU(2)_R \times U(1)_{B-L}$. This model features a…

In the context of supersymmetric models, we analyze the production of topological defects at the end of inflation driven by a conjugate pair of inflaton fields which are non-singlets under the continuous symmetry group of the theory. We…

It was shown by Garriga and Vilenkin that the circular shape of nucleated cosmic strings, of zero loop-energy in de Sitter space, is stable in the sense that the ratio of the mean fluctuation amplitude to the loop radius is constant. This…

We describe a class of supersymmetric unified models with the following properties: i) the full breaking of the gauge group is achieved by Higgs fields in the fundamental representation; ii) the correct unification of the strong and…