Related papers: Cosmological String Backgrounds from Gauged WZW Mo…
String cosmology models predict a stochastic cosmic background of gravitational waves with a characteristic spectrum. I describe the background, present astrophysical and cosmological bounds on it, and outline how it may be possible to…
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 study string theory on the extended spacetime of the BTZ black hole, as described by an orbifold of the SL(2,R) WZW model. The full spacetime has an infinite number of disconnected boundary components, each corresponding to a dual CFT.…
We study duals to field theories in two dimensions with N=(4,4) SUSY. The string backgrounds reproduce certain non-perturbative aspects of the dual field theory with a large number of colors N_c and a tunable number of flavors N_f.…
We investigate the string solutions and cosmological implications of the gauge ${\rm U(1)_Z}\,\times$ global ${\rm U(1)_{PQ}}$ model. With two hierarchical symmetry-breaking scales, the model exhibits three distinct string solutions: a…
Conformal field theories corresponding to two-dimensional electrically charged black holes and to two-dimensional anti-de Sitter space with a covariantly constant electric field are simply constructed as $SL(2,R)/Z$ WZW coset models. The…
We discuss solutions of the heterotic string theory which are analogous to bosonic and superstring backgrounds related to coset conformal field theories. A class of exact `left-right symmetric' solutions is obtained by supplementing the…
We study two-dimensional WZW models with target space a nonreductive Lie group. Such models exist whenever the Lie group possesses a bi-invariant metric. We show that such WZW models provide a lagrangian description of the nonreductive…
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…
Cosmic strings are predicted in many models beyond the Standard Model of particle physics. In models which admit strings, a network of strings will inevitably be formed in a phase transition in the early universe and will persist to the…
Cosmic strings, theoretical one-dimensional topological defects from the early universe, provide a valuable opportunity for exploring dark matter (DM) production and gravitational wave (GW) emission. Our study investigates the production of…
A solution of effective string theory in four dimensions is presented which admits interpretation of a rotating black cosmic string. It is constructed by tensoring the three dimensional black hole, extended with the Kalb-Ramond axion, with…
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…
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…
In a recent paper we developed a string cosmology background from classical string geometry. Here, we show that this background yields a solution to the size and horizon problems of Standard Big Bang cosmology while remaining compatible…
The string-dominated universe locally resembles an open universe, and fits dynamical measures of power spectra, cluster abundances, redshift distortions, lensing constraints, luminosity and angular diameter distance relations and microwave…
We consider the sl(2) current algebra at level k=-4 when the sl(2) BRST operator is nilpotent. We formulate a spectral sequence converging to the cohomology of this BRST operator. At the second term of the spectral sequence, we observe an…
We review known exact classical solutions in (bosonic) string theory. The main classes of solutions are `cosets' (gauged WZW models), `plane wave'-type backgrounds (admitting a covariantly constant null Killing vector) and `$F$-models'…
Toroidal backgrounds for bosonic strings are used to understand target space duality as a symmetry of string field theory and to study explicitly issues in background independence. Our starting point is the notion that the string field…
A large class of cosmological solutions (of the Einstein equations) in string theory, in the presence of Maxwell fields, is obtained by $O(d,d)$ transformations of simple backgrounds with $d$ toroidal isometries. In all the examples in…