Contact: bhartmann[AT]ifsc.usp.brLocation: Instituto de Fisíca de São Carlos, Universidade de Sao Paulo, Brazil
The workshop will focus on all aspects of cosmic defects: this includes their origin — the details of the phase transitions leading to their appearance — and individual microphysical structure, how they evolve in networks, what their cosmological consequences are, in particular their direct observational signatures and their effects on the large scale structure distribution of matter in the Universe, and how they compare with their counterparts which also form in condensed matter systems.