Topological defects
S.J. Poletti
ADP-95-58/M40,
in Cosmology: The Physics of the Universe,
Proceedings of the 8th Physics Summer School, A.N.U, Jan-Feb, 1995,
eds. B. Robson, N. Visvanathan and W.S. Woolcock (World Scientific, Singapore,
1996), pp. 308-333. ISBN 981-02-2513-X.
This is an introductory set of lecture notes on topological defects, given to
an audience with interests ranging from astronomy to particle physics. Topics
covered:
1. Introduction
2. What is a Topological Defect?
3. Nielsen-Olesen Vortex.
4. Formation of Cosmic Strings.
5. Monopoles and Domain Walls.
6. Physical Description of Cosmic Strings.
7. Evolution of the String Network.
8. Observational Consequences of Cosmic Strings.
- 8.1 Gravitational Lensing.
- 8.2 Cosmic Microwave Anisotropies.
- 8.3 Density Perturbations.
- 8.4 Gravitational Radiation.
- 8.5 Cosmic Rays.
9. Global Textures.
The paper (26 pages, 14 figures) is available as:
a gzipped tar file
(37kB)containing plain TeX source cosmic.tex, a tex input reformat.tex
and the figures - download, gunzip it and TeX. TeX needs epsf.tex, harvmac.tex;
a gzipped postscript file
(80 kB)
- your web browser should automatically convert this and
view it in a window, otherwise gunzip after downloading;
uncompressed postscript (285 kB)
Nota bene: Postscript viewers for many platforms (including Mac,
WIN95/NT, Unix, VMS and OS/2) can be readily downloaded from the
Ghostscript
site.