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Only 5% of what makes up the Universe is well understood, and it consists of baryonic matter and radiation. Dark matter and energy correspond to the remaining 95% of the Universe, and their origin and evolution have not yet been…
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…
Thermal inflation was proposed as a mechanism to dilute the density of cosmological moduli. Thermal inflation is driven by a complex scalar field possessing a large vacuum expectation value and a very flat potential, called a `flaton'. Such…
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…
We describe the detailed study and results of high-resolution numerical simulations of string-induced structure formation in open universes and those with a non-zero cosmological constant. The effect from small loops generated from the…
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…
We study the production of dark matter and dark radiation after reheating in string inflation models where the Calabi-Yau has a fibred structure and the visible sector lives on D3 branes. We show how the interplay between different physical…
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…
We investigate the properties of global cosmic string networks as a function of the ratio of string tension to Goldstone-field coupling, and as a function of the Hubble damping strength. Our results show unambiguously that the string…
Cosmic strings with small-scale structure have a coarse-grained mass per unit length $\mu$ which is larger than the string tension. This leads to an effective Newtonian gravitational line source and to a characteristic translational…
${\rm B - L}$ 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…
In cosmological models where local cosmic strings are formed at the end of a period of inflation, the perturbations are seeded both by the defects and by the quantum fluctuations. In a subset of these models, for example those based on…
We review applications of string theory to cosmology, from primordial times to the present-day accelerated expansion. Starting with a brief overview of cosmology and string compactifications, we discuss in detail moduli stabilisation,…
Motivated by astrophysical observations of excess electronic production in the galaxy, new theoretical models of the dark matter sector have been proposed in which the Standard model couples to the dark matter sector through an attractive…
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…
The cosmic string scenario in an open universe is developed -- including the equations of motion, a model of network evolution, the large angular scale CMB temperature anisotropy, and the power spectrum of density fluctuations produced by…
Cosmic strings can be created in the early universe during symmetry-breaking phase transitions, such as might arise if the gauge structure of the standard model is extended by additional U(1) factors at high energies. Cosmic strings present…
The search for cosmic strings has been of renewed interest with the advent of precision cosmology. In this note we give a quantitative description of the nonlinear matter density fluctuations that can form from a scaling network of cosmic…
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…
We study cosmic strings in the complex symmetron model, a scalar-tensor theory with a spontaneously broken local $U(1)$ symmetry in low matter density regions. Using numerical simulations, we show that these strings preferentially attach to…