Related papers: Polyhedral Cosmic Strings
Recent developments in quantum gravity suggest that wormholes may influence the observed values of the constants of nature. The Euclidean formulation of quantum gravity predicts that wormholes induce a probability distribution in the space…
We consider open bosonic strings. The non-interacting multi-string theory is described by certain free string field operators which we construct. These are shown to have local commutators with respect to a center of mass coordinate. 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…
The extreme electromagnetic or gravitational fields associated with some astrophysical objects can give rise to macroscopic effects arising from the physics of the quantum vacuum. Therefore, these objects are incredible laboratories for…
The Regge trajectories, upon which string theory is based, behave as rigid rotators rather than vibrating strings. The same relation, between the angular momentum, and the square of the mass, can be found in gravity, the electroweak, and…
Currently, string theory represents the only advanced approach to a unification of all interactions, including gravity. In spite of the more than thirty years of its existence it did not make any empirically testable predictions. And it is…
Inspired by the structural unification of unitary groups (quantum field theory) with orthogonal groups (relativity) proposed recently through a non-division algebra, we construct a hypercomplex field theory with an internal symmetry that…
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…
These lectures deal with selected aspects of quantum field theory in curved spacetime including the following topics: (1) Quantization of fields on a curved background, particle creation by gravitational fields, particle creation in an…
We present a general theory of mixing for an arbitrary number of fields with integer or half-integer spin. The time dynamics of the interacting fields is solved and the Fock space for interacting fields is explicitly constructed. The…
An overview is given of the formulation of low-energy string cosmologies together with examples of particular solutions, successes and problems of the theory.
This is a review. Comments are welcome. The observation that the structure of string theory is rich enough to include the standard model in rough outline is an old one, starting with the early constructions of free field constructions,…
After recalling a few basic concepts from cosmology and string theory, I will discuss the main ideas/assumptions underlying string cosmology and show how these lead to a two-parameter family of ``minimal" models. I will then explain how to…
Realizing dark energy and the observed de Sitter spacetime in quantum gravity has proven to be obstructed in most every usual approach. We argue that additional degrees of freedom of the left- and right-movers in string theory and a…
The mode problem on the factored 3--sphere is applied to field theory calculations for massless fields of spin 0, 1/2 and 1. The degeneracies on the factors, including lens spaces, are neatly derived in a geometric fashion. Vacuum energies…
The presence of fields with negative mass-squared typically leads to some form of instability in standard field theories. The observation that, at least in the light-cone gauge, strings propagating in plane wave spacetimes can have…
An anomaly-free quantum theory of a relativistic string is constructed in two-dimensional space-time. The states of the string are found to be similar to the states of a massless chiral quantum particle. This result is obtained by…
A polemical article evaluating string theory from the point of view of a quantum field theorist working in a mathematics department. Comments to the author are encouraged.
We investigate the renormalized vacuum expectation values of the field square and the energy-momentum tensor for the electromagnetic field inside and outside of a conducting cylindrical shell in the cosmic string spacetime. By using the…
We consider a scalar quantum field theory, in which the interaction takes the form of a field cutoff; the energy diverges to infinity whenever the value of the field at some point falls outside a finite interval. In a simple…