English

Electromagnetic back-reaction from currents on a straight string

Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics 2014-07-16 v2

Abstract

Charge carriers moving at the speed of light along a straight, superconducting cosmic string carry with them a logarithmically divergent slab of electromagnetic field energy. Thus no finite local input can induce a current that travels unimpeded to infinity. Rather, electromagnetic back-reaction must damp this current asymptotically to nothing. We compute this back-reaction and find that the electromagnetic fields and currents decline exactly as rapidly as necessary to prevent a divergence. We briefly discuss the corresponding gravitational situation.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1405.2097,
  title  = {Electromagnetic back-reaction from currents on a straight string},
  author = {Jeremy M. Wachter and Ken D. Olum},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1405.2097},
  year   = {2014}
}

Comments

14 pages, 4 figures; corrected Eq. (41), clarified language after referee feedback

R2 v1 2026-06-22T04:09:42.633Z