Outcomes of Grand Unified Symmetry Breaking

Abstract

We numerically study the outcome of symmetry breaking motivated by Grand Unified models. Our results show the formation of biased domain walls for a range of parameters together with magnetic monopoles. The interactions of walls and monopoles leads to novel processes such as the absorption of monopoles on walls, production of monopoles when domain walls annihilate, collapse of walls with magnetic charge that can, with gravity taken into account, produce magnetically charged black holes, and production of a stochastic gravitational wave background from biased domain walls. Our findings open new avenues for probing the grand unification epoch by cosmological observables.