Related papers: Status of String Cosmology: Phenomenological Aspec…
This thesis is dedicated to the study of inflationary scenarios based on string theory. Inflation is a brief period of accelerated expansion in the very early Universe which gives natural explanations for problems of the Standard Big Bang…
A large class of string-cosmology backgrounds leads to a spectrum of relic stochastic gravitational waves, strongly tilted towards high frequencies, and characterized by two basic parameters of the cosmological model. We estimate the…
It is stressed that the kinematical problems of the standard cosmological model can be solved by a phase of accelerated contraction of the cosmic scale factor. Such a behaviour is only a particular case of a more general ``pre-big-bang"…
`Old' String Theory is a theory of one-dimensional extended objects, whose vibrations correspond to excitations of various target-space field modes including gravity. In these lectures I will give an introduction to low-energy Effective…
The next generation of gravitational wave detectors holds out the prospect of detecting a stochastic gravitational background generated in the very early universe. In this article, we review the various cosmological processes which can lead…
The mean spectrum and burst statistics of gravitational waves produced by a cosmological population of cosmic string loops are estimated using analytic approximations, calibrated with earlier simulations. Formulas are derived showing the…
We derive a generalized equation for the evolution of tensor perturbations in a cosmological background, taking into account higher-curvature contributions and a tree-level coupling to the dilaton in the string frame. The equation is…
Some of the phenomenological implications of string cosmological models are reviewed, with particular attention to the spectra of the tensor, scalar and vector modes of the geometry. A class of self-dual string cosmological models is…
The allowed mass windows for a cosmic background of relic dilatons are estimated in the context of the pre-big bang scenario. The dilatons are produced from the quantum fluctuations of the vacuum, and the extension of the windows is…
This paper presents a review of the basic, model-independent differences between the pre-big bang scenario, arising naturally in a string cosmology context, and the standard inflationary scenario. We use an unconventional approach in which…
We investigate the generation of curvature and isocurvature (dilaton, moduli and axion) perturbations in a general class of axion-dilaton-moduli models,including the pre-big bang scenario. Allowing for an arbitrary coupling constant between…
String cosmology models predict a relic background of gravitational-wave (GW) radiation in the early universe. The GW energy spectrum of radiated power increases rapidly with the frequency, and therefore it becomes a potential and…
For suitable cosmological backgrounds, thermal fluctuations of a gas of strings can generate a scale-invariant spectrum of cosmological fluctuations without requiring a phase of inflationary expansion. We highlight the key points of this…
The different couplings of the dilaton to the U(1) gauge field of heterotic and Type I superstrings may leave an imprint on the relics of the very early cosmological evolution. Working in the context of the pre-big bang scenario, we discuss…
A synthetic report of the advances in the study of classical and quantum string dynamics in curved backgrounds is provided, namely: the new feature of multistring solutions; the effect of a cosmological constant and of spacial curvature on…
This is a contracted version of a series of lectures for graduate and undergraduate students given at the {\sl "VI Seminario Nazionale di Fisica Teorica"} (Parma, September 1997), at the Second Int. Conference {\sl "Around VIRGO"} (Pisa,…
We formulate the basic postulate of pre-big bang cosmology as one of ``asymptotic past triviality'', by which we mean that the initial state is a generic perturbative solution of the tree-level low-energy effective action. Such a…
The tracing of cosmological relics from the early string dynamics may enhance the theory and provide new perspectives on the major cosmological problems. This point is illustrated in a leading-order Bianchi-type $VII_0$ string background,…
We review physical motivations, phenomenological consequences, and open problems of the so-called pre-big bang scenario in superstring cosmology.
We consider the cosmological amplification of a metric perturbation propagating in a higher-dimensional Brans-Dicke background, including a non trivial dilaton evolution. We discuss the properties of the spectral energy density of the…