Cosmic Superstrings

Joe Polchinski, University of California, Santa Barbara

It is possible that superstrings, as well as other one-dimensional 'branes,' could have been produced in the early universe and then expanded to cosmic size today. I will discuss the conditions under which this occurs, and the signatures of these strings. Such cosmic superstrings could be the brightest objects visible in gravitational wave astronomy, and might be distinguishable from gauge theory cosmic strings by their network properties.