Cosmic strings in an expanding spacetime

We investigate the stability of a static, infinitely long and straight vacuum string solution under inhomogeneous axisymmetric time-dependent perturbations. We find it to be perturbatively stable. We further extend our work by finding a string solutions in an expanding Universe. The back reaction of the string on the gravitational field has been ignored. The background is assumed to be a Friedman-Robertson-Walker (FRW) cosmology. By numerically integrating the field equations in a radiation and matter dominated models, we discover oscillatory solutions. The possible damping of these oscillations is discussed. For late times the solution becomes identical to the static one studied in the first part of the paper. 19 refs., 8 figs

Friedmann Equation and Stability of Inflationary Higher Derivative Gravity

Stability analysis on the De Sitter universe in pure gravity theory is known to be useful in many aspects. We first show how to complete the proof of an earlier argument based on a redundant field equation. It is shown further that the stability condition applies to $k \ne 0$ Friedmann-Robertson-Walker spaces based on the non-redundant Friedmann equation derived from a simple effective Lagrangian. We show how to derive this expression for the Friedmann equation of pure gravity theory. This expression is also generalized to include scalar field interactions.Comment: Revtex, 6 pages, Add two more references, some typos correcte

Non-static vacuum strings: exterior and interior solutions

New non-static cylindrically symmetric solutions of Einsteins's equations are presented. Some of these solutions represent string-like objects. An exterior vacuum solution is matched to a non-vacuum interior solution for different forms of the energy-momentum tensor. They generalize the standard static string. 12 refs

No hair theorem for inhomogeneous cosmologies

We show that under very general conditions any inhomogeneous cosmological model with a positive cosmological constant, that can be described in a synchronous reference system will tend asymptotically in time towards the de Sitter solution. This is shown to be relevant in the context of inflationary models as it makes inflation very weakly dependent on initial conditions. 8 refs