Heterotic cosmic strings

Katrin Becker, Melanie Becker, and Axel Krause

Phys. Rev. D 74, 045023 – Published 31 August 2006

Abstract

We show that all three conditions for the cosmological relevance of heterotic cosmic strings, the right tension, stability and a production mechanism at the end of inflation, can be met in the strongly coupled M-theory regime. Whereas cosmic strings generated from weakly coupled heterotic strings have the well-known problems posed by Witten in 1985, we show that strings arising from M5-branes wrapped around 4-cycles (divisors) of a Calabi-Yau in heterotic M-theory compactifications solve these problems in an elegant fashion.

Received 10 May 2006

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevD.74.045023

Authors & Affiliations

Katrin Becker^* and Melanie Becker^†

Radcliffe Institute, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02138, USA and Mitchell Institute for Fundamental Physics, Texas A&M University, College Station, Texas 77843, USA

Axel Krause^‡

Jefferson Physical Laboratory, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02138, USA and Mitchell Institute for Fundamental Physics, Texas A&M University, College Station, Texas 77843, USA

^*Electronic address: kbecker@radcliffe.edu
^†Electronic address: mbecker@radcliffe.edu
^‡Electronic address: akrause@fas.harvard.edu

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Issue

Vol. 74, Iss. 4 — 15 August 2006

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