Related papers: Cosmic Sparks from Superconducting Strings
The unique, conical spacetime created by cosmic strings brings about distinctive gravitational lensing phenomena. The variety of these distinctive phenomena is increased when the strings have non-trivial mutual interactions. In particular,…
Superstring theory and other supersymmetric theories predict the existence of relatively light, weakly interacting scalar particles, called moduli, with a universal form of coupling to matter. Such particles can be emitted from cusps of…
The time-dependent metric of a cosmic string leads to an effective interaction between the string and photons - the "gravitational Aharonov-Bohm" effect -- and causes cosmic strings to emit light. We evaluate the radiation of pairs of…
Cosmic strings are linear concentrations of energy that form whenever phase transitions in the early universe break axial symmetries as originally shown by Kibble. They are the result of frustrated order in the quantum fields responsible…
We consider the signature and detectability of gravitational microlensing of distant quasars by cosmic strings. Because of the simple image configuration such events will have a characteristic light curve, in which a source would appear to…
The mean spectrum and burst statistics of gravitational waves produced by a cosmological population of cosmic string loops are estimated using analytic approximations, calibrated with earlier simulations. Formulas are derived showing the…
Cosmic strings can give rise to a large variety of interesting astrophysical phenomena. Among them, powerful bursts of gravitational waves (GWs) produced by cusps are a promising observational signature. In this Letter we present a search…
Superconducting cosmic strings emit electromagnetic waves between the times of recombination and reionization. Hence, they have an effect on the global 21cm signal. We compute the resulting absorption features, focusing on strings with…
We study the gravitational radiation emission efficiency $\Gamma$ of superconducting cosmic strings. We demonstrate, by using a solvable model of transonic strings, that the presence of a current leads to a suppression of the gravitational…
Cosmic string loops contain cusps which decay by emitting bursts of particles. A significant fraction of the released energy is in the form of photons. These photons are injected non-thermally and can hence cause spectral distortions of the…
It has been speculated that cosmic string networks could produce ultra-high energy cosmic rays as a by-product of their evolution. By making use of recent work on the evolution of such networks, it will be shown that the flux of cosmic rays…
We calculate the probability distribution of a single component of peculiar velocities due to cosmic strings, smoothed over regions with a radius of several $h^{-1}$ Mpc. The probability distribution is shown to be Gaussian to good…
Cosmic strings are one-dimensional topological defects which could have been formed in the early stages of our Universe. They triggered a lot of interest, mainly for their cosmological implications: they could offer an alternative to…
Correlated red noise recently reported from pulsar timing observations may be an indication of stochastic gravitational waves emitted by cosmic strings that formed during a primordial phase transition near the Grand Unification energy…
We investigate the cosmological consequences of particle physics theories that admit stable loops of superconducting cosmic string - {\it vortons}. General symmetry breaking schemes are considered, in which strings are formed at one energy…
We report on a matched-filter search for gravitational wave bursts from cosmic string cusps using LIGO data from the fourth science run (S4) which took place in February and March 2005. No gravitational waves were detected in 14.9 days of…
Cosmic strings, a hot subject in the 1980's and early 1990's, lost its appeal when it was found that it leads to inconsistencies in the power spectrum of the measured cosmic microwave background temperature anisotropies. However,…
The gravitational wave (GW) signals emitted by a network of cosmic strings are reexamined in view of the possible formation of a network of cosmic superstrings at the end of brane inflation. The reconnection probability $p$ of intersecting…
Cosmic strings are topological defects which can be formed in GUT-scale phase transitions in the early universe. They are also predicted to form in the context of string theory. The main mechanism for a network of Nambu-Goto cosmic strings…
We study the spectrum of cosmic ray positrons produced by a scaling distribution of non-superconducting cosmic strings. In this scenario, the positrons are produced from the jets which form from the cosmic string cusp annihilation process.…