Professor Edward Hardy discusses how the network of cosmic strings that occurs in some theories of the early Universe evolves and emits gravitational waves in this Morning of Theoretical Physics talk from 9th November, 2024.
Cosmic strings and gravitational waves from the early Universe
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Professor Edward Hardy discusses cosmic strings and gravitational waves from the early Universe.
Cosmic strings are one-dimensional objects that often arise if a symmetry is spontaneously broken, as occurs in the early Universe
in many theories of physics beyond the standard model. I will describe how the resulting network of strings evolves and in the
process emits gravitational waves. These gravitational waves might be detectable in spectacularly precise searches today, and if
discovered could give us information about physics at extremely high energies, far beyond any that could be explored directly
e.g. in particle colliders.
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Learn about quantum mechanics, black holes, dark matter, plasma, particle accelerators, the Large Hadron Collider and other key Theoretical Physics topics. The Rudolf Peierls Centre for Theoretical Physics holds morning sessions consisting of three talks, pitched to explain an area of our research to an audience familiar with physics at about second-year undergraduate level.