Classical dynamics of strings and branes, with application to vortons

These notes offer an introductory overview of the essentials of classical brane dynamics in a space-time background of arbitrary dimension, using a systematic geometric treatment emphasising the role of the second fundamental tensor and its trace, the curvature vector $K^{\mu }$. This approach is applied to the problem of stability of vorton equilibrium states of cosmic string loops in an ordinary 4-dimensional background.