Topological Defects in SUSY

Topological defects are general consequences of almost all symmetry breaking processes. They arise naturally when a system goes through a phase transition from a symmetric phase to a phase in which the symmetry is broken. The formation and the evolution of cosmic topological defects in the early (or late) Universe has many direct and observable consequences that may allow us to constrain possible models of physics at high energy scales. In this paper, we discuss the formation, stability, and evolution of topological defects arising from standard field theory and in supersymmetric field theories. Then, we review how cosmological observations constrain the various theories.