Cosmic String Production Towards the End of Brane Inflation

We briefly discuss constraints on supersymmetric hybrid inflation models and examine the consistency of brane inflation models. We then address the implications for inflationary scenarios resulting from the strong constraints on the cosmic (super)string tension imposed from the most recent cosmic microwave background temperature anisotropies data.

Brane inflation is a specific realization of the inflationary universe scenario in the early universe within the brane world framework in string theory. The naturalness and robustness of this realistic scenario is explained. Its predictions on the cosmological observables in the cosmic microwave background radiation, especially possible distinct stringy features, such as large non-Gaussianity or large tensor mode that deviates from that predicted in the slow roll scenario, ar...

Brane inflation in superstring theory predicts that cosmic strings (but not domain walls or monopoles) are produced towards the end of the inflationary epoch. Here, we discuss the production, the spectrum and the evolution of such cosmic strings, properties that differentiate them from those coming from an abelian Higgs model. As D-branes in extra dimensions, some type of cosmic strings will dissolve rapidly in spacetime, while the stable ones appear with a spectrum of cosmic...

Overall, brane inflation is compatible with the recent analysis of the WMAP data. Here we explore the constraints of WMAP and 2dFGRS data on the various brane inflationary scenarios. Brane inflation naturally ends with the production of cosmic strings, which may provide a way to distinguish these models observationally. We argue that currently available data cannot exclude a non-negligible contribution from cosmic strings definitively. We perform a partial statistical analysi...

Cosmic superstrings are expected to be formed at the end of brane inflation, within the context of brane-world cosmological models inspired from string theory. By studying properties of cosmic suprestring networks, and comparing their phenomenological consequences against observational data, we aim at pinning down the successful and natural inflationary model and get an insight into the stringy description of our universe.

Cosmology motivated by string theory has been studied extensively in the recent literature. String theory is promising because it has interesting features such as unifying gravity, electromagnetic, weak and strong nuclear forces. However, even the energy scale of the experiments at the Large Hadron Collider (~TeV) is too low to detect any strong evidence for string theory. The energy scale of inflation can be above ~10^9 TeV. Therefore, it is expected to find some signature o...

We investigate a static, cylindrically symmetric cosmic string on the brane without a perturbative approximation. We find there could be a (large) enhancement of the (effective) string tension when the energy density at the center of the string is (much) larger than twice the brane tension. We also point out a new way to evade the cosmic string problem when the energy density at the center of the string approaches twice the brane tension. These findings could have experimenta...

Cosmic strings, a hot subject in the 1980's and early 1990's, lost its appeal when it was found that it leads to inconsistencies in the power spectrum of the measured cosmic microwave background temperature anisotropies. However, topological defects in general, and cosmic strings in particular, are deeply rooted in the framework of grand unified theories. Indeed, it was shown that cosmic strings are expected to be generically formed within supersymmetric grand unified theorie...

Cosmic strings are predicted by many field-theory models, and may have been formed at a symmetry-breaking transition early in the history of the universe, such as that associated with grand unification. They could have important cosmological effects. Scenarios suggested by fundamental string theory or M-theory, in particular the popular idea of brane inflation, also strongly suggest the appearance of similar structures. Here we review the reasons for postulating the existence...

By considering simple, but representative, models of brane inflation from a single brane-antibrane pair in the slow roll regime, we provide constraints on the parameters of the theory imposed by measurements of the CMB anisotropies by WMAP including a cosmic string component. We find that inclusion of the string component is critical in constraining parameters. In the most general model studied, which includes an inflaton mass term, as well as the brane-antibrane attraction, ...