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Cosmic strings. (English) Zbl 1141.83002

Unruh, William G. (ed.) et al., Quantum analogues: From phase transitions to black holes and cosmology. Selected lectures from the international workshop on ‘Quantum simulations via analogues’, Dresden, Germany, July 25–28, 2005. Berlin: Springer (ISBN 978-3-540-70858-2/hbk). Lecture Notes in Physics 718, 247-288 (2007).
The author tries to give an almost exhaustive review of the actual state of cosmic strings with inclusion of her own papers in this area. The author concludes, that a realistic scenario necessitates the input of high energy physics, implying that models describing the early stages of the evolution of the Universe have their foundations in both general relativity as well as in high Energy physics. Comparing the predictions of such models against current astrophysical and cosmological data one concludes to either their acceptance or their rejection, while in the first case one can also fix the free parameters of the models.
One of the most beautiful examples in this interplay between cosmology and high energy physics is the case of cosmic strings. Cosmic strings follow from the GUT theories, as well from M-theory. Even though their role in explaining the origin of the observed large-scale structure is sub-dominant, their astrophysical and cosmological implications remain important, the author concludes. The last sentence in the conclusions should be read as “Cosmic strings are a small but by no means no negligible contribution to any successful cosmological model”, probably.
For the entire collection see [Zbl 1115.83001].

MSC:

83-02 Research exposition (monographs, survey articles) pertaining to relativity and gravitational theory
83F05 Relativistic cosmology
83E30 String and superstring theories in gravitational theory
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