Cosmic Structure Formation with Topological Defects

Abstract

Topological defects are ubiquitous in physics. Whenever a symmetry breaking phase transition occurs, topological defects may form. The best known examples are vortex lines in type II super conductors or in liquid Helium, and declination lines in liquid crystals. In an adiabatically expanding universe which cools down from a very hot initial state, it is quite natural to postulate that topological defects may have emerged during a phase transition in the early universe and that they may have played the role of initial inhomogeneities seeding the formation of cosmic structure. This basic idea goes back to Kibble (1976). In this report we summarize the progress made in the investigation of Kibble's idea during the last 25 years. Our understanding of the formation and evolution of topological defects is reported almost completely in the beautiful book by Vilenkin & Shellard or the excellent Review by Hindmarsh & Kibble, and we shall hence be rather short on that topic. Nevertheless, in order to be self contained, we have included a short chapter on spontaneous symmetry breaking and defect formation. Our main topic is however the calculation of structure formation with defects, results which are not included in the above references.

Review for Physics Reports, 133 pages 29 figures. Updated to match published version. Better quality and color figures are available at http://mpej.unige.ch/~durrer

References in corpus (2)

• Gamma ray bursts from superconducting cosmic strings
• CMB Bispectrum from Active Models of Structure Formation

Cited by in corpus (120)

• Planck 2015 results. XIII. Cosmological parameters
• Spontaneous Skyrmion Ground States in Magnetic Metals
• First Year Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) Observations: Implications for Inflation
• Cosmological Backgrounds of Gravitational Waves
• Cosmological Magnetic Fields: Their Generation, Evolution and Observation
• Hunting for topological dark matter with atomic clocks
• Planck 2013 results. XXV. Searches for cosmic strings and other topological defects
• Particle physics models of inflation and curvaton scenarios
• Non-Gaussianity in multi-field inflation
• Gravitational waves from stochastic relativistic sources: primordial turbulence and magnetic fields
• The Spectrum of Gravitational Radiation from Primordial Turbulence
• Cosmic phase transitions: their applications and experimental signatures
• CMB power spectrum contribution from cosmic strings using field-evolution simulations of the Abelian Higgs model
• Vanishing skyrmion Hall effect at the angular momentum compensation temperature of a ferrimagnet
• Exploring Cosmic Origins with CORE: Inflation
• Exact Scale-Invariant Background of Gravitational Waves from Cosmic Defects
• Search for domain wall dark matter with atomic clocks on board global positioning system satellites
• Deformed Defects
• Probing the equation of state of the early universe with a space laser interferometer
• Halo Clustering with Non-Local Non-Gaussianity
• Small-Angle CMB Temperature Anisotropies Induced by Cosmic Strings
• Stochastic gravitational waves from cosmic string loops in scaling
• CMB power spectra from cosmic strings: predictions for the Planck satellite and beyond
• Science with the TianQin Observatory: Preliminary Results on Stochastic Gravitational-Wave Background
• New CMB constraints for Abelian Higgs cosmic strings
• CMB polarization power spectra contributions from a network of cosmic strings
• The nanohertz stochastic gravitational wave background from cosmic string loops and the abundant high redshift massive galaxies
• D-term inflation without cosmic strings
• N-body methods for relativistic cosmology
• Cosmic strings and their induced non-Gaussianities in the cosmic microwave background
• WMAP constraints on inflationary models with global defects
• Can topological defects mimic the BICEP2 B-mode signal?
• Cosmic microwave anisotropies from BPS semilocal strings
• Inflation and Brane Gases
• Cosmic Microwave Background constraints for global strings and global monopoles
• Probing the scale dependence of non-Gaussianity with spectral distortions of the cosmic microwave background
• Irreducible background of gravitational waves from a cosmic defect network: update and comparison of numerical techniques
• Cosmological perturbation theory
• Cosmic strings reborn?
• The Cosmic Microwave Background: The history of its experimental investigation and its significance for cosmology
• The Wall of Fundamental Constants
• Vector modes generated by primordial density fluctuations
• Early Structure Formation from Cosmic String Loops in Light of Early JWST Observations
• Cosmological perturbations and the reionization epoch
• A monopole solution in a Lorentz-violating field theory
• Constraints on the Nambu-Goto cosmic string contribution to the CMB power spectrum in light of new temperature and polarisation data
• Cosmic string loop production functions
• Understanding Domain Wall Network Evolution
• Energy-momentum correlations for Abelian Higgs cosmic strings
• Constraining topological defects with temperature and polarization anisotropies
• Magnetic field generation from non-equilibrium phase transitions
• Collapse of Skyrmions in 2d Ferro- and Antiferromagnets
• Semiclassical gravitational effects on the gravitational lensing in the spacetime of topological defects
• Evolution of primordial magnetic fields during large-scale structure formation
• CMB power spectrum of Nambu-Goto cosmic strings
• Large scale magnetogenesis from a non-equilibrium phase transition in the radiation dominated era
• Detecting and distinguishing topological defects in future data from the CMBPol satellite
• The CMB Bispectrum, Trispectrum, non-Gaussianity, and the Cramer-Rao Bound
• Intermediate Mass Black Hole Seeds from Cosmic String Loops
• On the degeneracy between primordial tensor modes and cosmic strings in future CMB data from Planck
• Level Set Method for the Evolution of Defect and Brane Networks
• One $\mu$ to rule them all: CMB spectral distortions can probe domain walls, cosmic strings and low scale phase transitions
• All sky CMB map from cosmic strings integrated Sachs-Wolfe effect
• Evolution of local and global monopole networks
• The local B-polarization of the CMB: a very sensitive probe of cosmic defects
• Semilocal Cosmic String Networks
• Moduli from Cosmic Strings
• Non-Gaussianity from Self-Ordering Scalar Fields
• Cosmological gravity on all scales: simple equations, required conditions, and a framework for modified gravity
• Angular 21 cm Power Spectrum of a Scaling Distribution of Cosmic String Wakes
• Estimating the weak-lensing rotation signal in radio cosmic shear surveys
• Exploring wormhole solutions with global monopole charge in the context of $f(Q)$ gravity
• Large scale CMB anomalies from thawing cosmic strings
• Can Self-Ordering Scalar Fields explain the BICEP2 B-mode signal?
• Optical analysis of a CMB cosmic string candidate
• Finite volume effects for non-Gaussian multi-field inflationary models
• A topologically charged four-dimensional wormhole and the energy conditions
• Where are the Walls?
• Quintessence with a constant equation of state in hyperbolic universes
• Search for transient ultralight dark matter signatures with networks of precision measurement devices using a Bayesian statistics method
• From collinear to vortex magnetic structures in Mn corrals on Pt(111)
• Cosmic Microwave Background temperature and polarization anisotropies from the large-N limit of global defects
• Gravitational Interactions of Finite Thickness Global Topological Defects with Black Holes
• Extracting the Signal of Cosmic String Wakes from 21-cm Observations
• Probing early-universe phase transitions with CMB spectral distortions
• Cosmic Textures and Global Monopoles as Seeds for Super-Massive Black Holes
• Redshift-space distortions from vector perturbations
• Wigner-Eckart theorem in cosmology: Bispectra for total-angular-momentum waves
• Stochastic gravitational waves from long cosmic strings
• Kink-Antikink Formation from an Oscillation Mode by Sudden Distortion of the Evolution Potential
• The bispectrum of matter perturbations from cosmic strings
• Cosmic strings in Bekenstein-type models
• Fermionic vacuum polarization around a cosmic string in compactified AdS spacetime
• Applying the matched-filter technique to the search for dark matter transients with networks of quantum sensors
• Topological pseudodefects of a supersymmetric $SO(10)$ model and cosmology
• Causal perturbation theory in general FRW cosmologies I: energy momentum conservation and matching conditions
• p-brane dynamics in N+1-dimensional FRW universes
• Primordial magnetic fields from self-ordering scalar fields
• Redshift-space distortions from vector perturbations II: Anisotropic signal
• Investigating cosmic strings using large-volume hydrodynamical simulations in the context of JWST's massive UV-bright galaxies
• Baryogenesis via Leptogenesis in presence of cosmic strings
• On the Quantization of Burgers Vector and Gravitational Energy in the Space-Time of a Conical Defect
• Stability of the pion string in a thermal and dense medium
• Interferences in the Stochastic Gravitational Wave Background
• CMB and Cosmological Parameters: Current Status and Prospects
• Soliton foam formation in the early Universe
• Applications of the Peach-Koehler Force in Liquid Crystals
• Higher-dimensional topologically charged traversable defect wormhole with non-exotic matter
• Cosmology Rounding the Cape
• Particle motion in weak relativistic gravitational fields
• Physics of Cosmic Microwave Background anisotropies and primordial fluctuations
• New Constraints on Dark Energy
• Cosmic Rays and Spectral Distortions from Collapsing Textures
• Quasinormal Modes and Hawking Radiation Sparsity of GUP corrected Black Holes in Bumblebee Gravity with Topological Defects
• Cosmological Consequences of Topological Defects: Dark Energy and Varying Fundamental Constants
• Weak lensing from self-ordering scalar fields
• Multiple Peaks in the CMB
• Fibration, Nexus and Cosmological Composite Topological Defects in Uniaxially Disordered Superfluid ${}^3$He
• The CMB Cold Spot under the lens II: Lensing signatures in polarization and cosmic texture footprints
• PhD Thesis: String theory in the early universe