The next cosmology seminar takes place on Thursday 12th of June, room E349 at 2:00pm. We will have the pleasure to listen to Carlos Martins from the Institute of Astrophysics and Space Sciences, Porto (Portugal).
At 2:00pm, room E349, Carlos J.A.P. Martins will be talking about
To scale, or not to scale
Cosmic defect networks are fossil relics of earlier stages in the universe’s evolution. Their astrophysical detection would provide unique insights into these earlier stages, and even upper limits yield valuable information. However, for these analyses to be reliable, one needs a precise and accurate understanding of the evolution of these networks. I will describe recent progress, both on analytic modelling and on numerical simulations, to improve the understanding of this evolution. The focus will be on the issue of scaling of the networks. The linear scaling solution is known to be an attractor for the simplest defects, such as plain cosmic strings, but in more general (and arguably more realistic) models, such as those in which the defects have worldsheet charges and currents, other cosmological scaling solutions can in principle occur, depending on the microphysics of the model. I will present a taxonomy of these solutions, and briefly comment on how different models could be distinguished in the event of future detections.