München 2009 – wissenschaftliches Programm

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GR: Fachverband Gravitation und Relativitätstheorie

GR 8: Hauptvorträge Donnerstag

GR 8.3: Hauptvortrag

Donnerstag, 12. März 2009, 09:50–10:30, A214

Cosmic and superconducting strings — •Betti Hartmann — School of Engineering and Science, Jacobs University Bremen, 28759 Bremen

Cosmic strings are the topological defect that seems most important from the point of view of cosmological applications, especially since it is now believed that cosmic strings might be linked to the fundamental strings of String theory. The reason are so-called brane world scenarios which allow to lower the fundamental Planck scale down to the TeV scale. Newly developed inflation scenarios (e.g. hybrid inflation) almost always predict the production of strings at the end of inflation. The objects formed are so-called D- and F-strings, where D stands for Dirichlet and F for fundamental. Also bound states of these F- and D-strings, so-called p-q-strings are possible. Recently, field theoretical models have been developed that describe such objects. In the first part of my talk, I will discuss the “zoo” of cosmic strings available and also mention their gravitational properties. In the second part of my talk I will concentrate on superconducting strings. These are current- and charge-carrying strings, which can have an additional internal structure in the form of bosonic or fermionic fields. This internal structure can lead to the formation of vortons, i.e. loops of cosmic string that are balanced against gravitational collapse by a non-vanishing angular momentum. I will discuss an equation of state describing superconducting strings that has recently been confirmed numerically.