The high-temperature plasma above the electroweak scale ϳ100 GeV may have contained a primordial hypercharge magnetic field whose anomalous coupling to the fermions induces a transformation of the hypermagnetic energy density into fermionic number. In order to describe this process, we generalize the ordinary magnetohydrodynamical equations to the anomalous case. We show that a not completely homogeneous hypermagnetic background induces fermion-number fluctuations, which can be expressed in terms of a generic hypermagnetic field configuration. We argue that, depending upon the various particle physics parameters involved in our estimate ͑electron Yukawa coupling, strength of the electroweak phase transition͒ and upon the hypermagnetic energy spectrum, sizable matter-antimatter fluctuations can be generated in the plasma. These fluctuations may modify the predictions of the standard big bang nucleosynthesis ͑BBN͒. We derive constraints on the magnetic fields from the requirement that the homogeneous BBN is not changed. We analyze the influence of primordial magnetic fields on the electroweak phase transition and show that some specific configurations of the magnetic field may be converted into net baryon number at the electroweak scale. ͓S0556-2821͑98͒05704-X͔PACS number͑s͒: 98.80. Cq, 98.80.Ft

Cosmology, high-energy physics and astrophysics are converging on the study of large-scale magnetic fields. While the experimental evidence for the existence of large-scale magnetization in galaxies, clusters and superclusters is rather compelling, the origin of the phenomenon remains puzzling especially in light of the most recent observations. The purpose of the present review is to describe the physical motivations and some of the open theoretical problems related to the existence of large-scale magnetic fields.

We compute the spectrum of scalar and tensor metric perturbations generated, as amplified vacuum fluctuations, during an epoch of dilaton-driven inflation of the type occurring naturally in string cosmology. In the tensor case the computation is straightforward while, in the scalar case, it is made delicate by the appearance of a growing mode in the familiar longitudinal gauge. In spite of this, a reliable perturbative calculation of perturbations far outside the horizon can be performed by resorting either to appropriate gauge invariant variables, or to a new coordinate system in which the growing mode can be "gauged down".The simple outcome of this complicated analysis is that both scalar and tensor perturbations exhibit nearly Planckian spectra, whose common "temperature" is related to some very basic parameters of the string-cosmology background.

Sufficiently large seeds for generating the observed (inter)galactic magnetic fields emerge naturally in string cosmology from the amplification of electromagnetic vacuum fluctuations due to a dynamical dilaton background. The success of the mechanism depends crucially on two features of the so-called pre-big-bang scenario, an early epoch of dilaton-driven inflation at very small coupling, and a sufficiently long intermediate stringy era preceding the standard radiation-dominated evolution.

A large class of quintessential inflationary models, recently proposed by Peebles and Vilenkin, leads to post-inflationary phases whose effective equation of state is stiffer than radiation. The expected gravitational waves logarithmic energy spectra are tilted towards high frequencies and characterized by two parameters: the inflationary curvature scale at which the transition to the stiff phase occurs and the number of (non conformally coupled) scalar degrees of freedom whose decay into fermions triggers the onset of a gravitational reheating of the Universe. Depending upon the parameters of the model and upon the different inflationary dynamics (prior to the onset of the stiff evolution) the relic gravitons energy density can be much more sizeable than in standard inflationary models, for frequencies larger than 1 Hz. We estimate the required sensitivity for detection of the predicted spectral amplitude and show that the allowed region of our parameter space leads to a signal smaller (by one 1.5 orders of magnitude) than the advanced LIGO sensitivity at a frequency of 0.1 KHz. The maximal signal, in our context, is expected in the GHz region where the energy density of relic gravitons in critical units (i.e. h 2 0 ΩGW) is of the order of 10 −6 , roughly eight orders of magnitude larger than in ordinary inflationary models. Smaller detectors (not necessarily interferometers) can be relevant for detection purposes in the GHz frequency window. We suggest/speculate that future measurements through microwave cavities can offer interesting perspectives. I. FORMULATION OF THE PROBLEMThe idea that our present Universe could be populated by a sea of stochastically distributed gravitational waves (GW) is both experimentally appealing and theoretically plausible. It is appealing since it would offer a natural cosmological source for the GW detectors which will come in operation during the next decade, like LIGO [1], VIRGO [2], LISA [3] and GEO-600 [4] 1 . It is also plausible, since nearly all the models trying to describe the first moments of the life of the Universe do predict the formation of stochastic gravitational wave backgrounds [5,6].Our knowledge of early the Universe is only indirect. The success of big-bang nucleosynthesis (BBN) offers an explanation of the existence of light elements whose abundances are of the the same order in different and distant galaxies. BBN hints that when the cosmic plasma was as hot as 0.1 MeV, the Universe was probably dominated by radiation [7]. Prior to this moment direct cosmological observation are lacking but one can be reasonably confident that the laws of physics probed in particle accelerators still hold. Almost ten years of LEP (Large Electron Postitron collider) tested the minimal standard model (MSM) of particle interactions to the precision of the one per thousand for center of mass energies of the order of the Z boson resonance. The cosmological implications of the validity of the MSM are quite important especially for what concerns the problem of the baryon asymmetry...

A generalization of the Bardeen formalism to the case of warped geometries is presented. The system determining the gauge-invariant fluctuations of the metric induced by the scalar fluctuations of the brane is reduced to a set of Schrödinger-like equations for the Bardeen potentials and for the canonical normal modes of the scalar-tensor action. Scalar, vector and tensor modes of the geometry are classified according to four-dimensional Lorentz transformations. While the tensor modes of the geometry live on the brane determining the corrections to Newton law, the scalar and and vector fluctuations exhibit non normalizable zero modes and are, consequently, not localized on the brane. The spectrum of the massive modes of the fluctuations is analyzed using supersymmetric quantum mechanics.

We consider the possibility of localizing gravity on a Nielsen-Olesen vortex in the context of the Abelian Higgs model. The vortex lives in a six-dimensional space-time with negative bulk cosmological constant. In this model we find a region of the parameter space leading, simultaneously, to warped compactification and to regular space-time geometry. A thin defect limit is studied. Regular solutions describing warped compactifications in the case of higher winding number are also presented.Comment: LaTeX, 39 pages, 21 figures, final version appeared in Nucl. Phys.

We present a comprehensive study of the cosmological solutions of 6D braneworld models with azimuthal symmetry in the extra dimensions, moduli stabilization by flux or a bulk scalar field, and which contain at least one 3-brane that could be identified with our world. We emphasize an unusual property of these models: their expansion rate depends on the 3-brane tension either not at all, or in a nonstandard way, at odds with the naive expected dimensional reduction of these systems to 4D general relativity at low energies. Unlike other braneworld attempts to find a self-tuning solution to the cosmological constant problem, the apparent failure of decoupling in these models is not associated with the presence of unstabilized moduli; rather it is due to automatic cancellation of the brane tension by the curvature induced by the brane. This provides some corroboration for the hope that these models provide a distinctive step toward understanding the smallness of the observed cosmological constant. However, we point out some challenges for obtaining realistic cosmology within this framework.