Related papers: Elements of String Cosmology
The Cosmological Constant Problem is re-examined from an effective field theory perspective. While the connection between gravity and particle physics has not been experimentally probed in the quantum regime, it is severely constrained by…
Implications of string-string dualities to cosmological string vacua are discussed. Cosmological vacua of classical string theories comprise of disjoint classses mapped one another by scale-factor T-duality. Each classes are, however,…
String theory is the leading contemporary framework to explore the synthesis of quantum mechanics with gravity. String phenomenology aims to study string theory while maintaining contact with observational data. The fermionic $Z_2\times…
Recent work suggests that fundamental and Dirichlet strings, and their (p,q) bound states, may be observed as cosmic strings. The evolution of cosmic string networks, and therefore their observational signals, depends on what happens when…
While the classification of $\alpha'$ corrections of string inspired effective theories remains an unsolved problem, we show how to classify duality invariant $\alpha'$ corrections for purely time-dependent (cosmological) backgrounds. We…
A rather simple and non-technical exposition of our new approach to {\em Time, Quantum Physics, Black-Hole dynamics}, and {\em Cosmology}, based on non-critical string theory, is provided. A new fundamental principle, the {\em Procrustean…
Time-like linear dilaton triggers, at the classical level, the creation of closed folded strings at an instant. We show that in cosmology these instant folded strings induce negative pressure at no energy cost. Hence they seem to allow an…
We study the classical dynamics of a bosonic string in the $D$--dimensional flat Friedmann--Robertson--Walker and Schwarzschild backgrounds. We make a perturbative development in the string coordinates around a {\it null} string…
The classical black hole background of two-dimensional string theory is examined after including the effect of the tachyon field. Keeping all terms upto $O(T^2)$, and making no other approximations, the only consistent classical solution to…
Isotropic string cosmology solutions can be classified into two duality related branches: one can be connected smoothly to an expanding Friedman-Robertson-Walker Universe, the other describes accelerated inflation or contraction. We show…
Progress on string theory in curved spacetimes since 1992 are reviewed. After a short introduction on strings in Minkowski and curved spacetimes, we focus on strings in cosmological spacetimes. The classical behaviour of strings in FRW and…
We present arguments for the existence of new black string solutions with negative cosmological constant. These higher-dimensional configurations have no dependence on the `compact' extra dimension, and their conformal infinity is the…
We explore the possibility of solving the dark energy and the coincidence problems by postulating the massless sector of closed strings. This sector constitutes the gravitational multiplet of string theory and, when applied to…
In previous papers we have shown how strings in a two-dimensional target space reconcile quantum mechanics with general relativity, thanks to an infinite set of conserved quantum numbers, ``W-hair'', associated with topological soliton-like…
We study classical closed bosonic strings probing the near-horizon region of a non-extremal black hole and show that this corresponds to understanding string theory in the Carroll regime. This is done by first performing a Carroll expansion…
The dynamics of the early universe may have been profoundly influenced by spatial anisotropies. A search for such backgrounds in the context of string cosmology has uncovered the existence of an entire class of (spatatially) homogeneous but…
In the context of homogeneous and isotropic superstring cosmology, the T-duality symmetry of string theory has been used to argue that for a background space-time described by dilaton gravity with strings as matter sources, the cosmological…
We investigate the nature of ordinary cosmic vortices in some scalar-tensor extensions of gravity. We find solutions for which the dilaton field condenses inside the vortex core. These solutions can be interpreted as raising the degeneracy…
We examine the metric of an isolated self-gravitating abelian-Higgs vortex in dilatonic gravity for arbitrary coupling of the vortex fields to the dilaton. We look for solutions in both massless and massive dilaton gravity. We compare our…
An anisotropic (Bianchi type I) cosmology is considered in the four-dimensional NS-NS sector of low-energy effective string theory coupled to a dilaton and an axion-like $H$-field within a de Sitter-Einstein frame background. The time…