Related papers: Energy-conservation constraints on cosmic string l…
We examine the effects of cosmic strings on structure formation and on the ionization history of the universe. While Gaussian perturbations from inflation are known to provide the dominant contribution to the large scale structure of the…
We study the decay of cosmic string loops in the Abelian-Higgs model. We confirm earlier results that loops formed by intersections of infinite strings formed from random-field initial conditions disappear quickly, with lifetime…
We study the relative contribution of cusps and pseudocusps, on cosmic (super)strings, to the emitted bursts of gravitational waves. The gravitational wave emission in the vicinity of highly relativistic points on the string follows, for a…
Decaying topological defects, in particular cosmic strings, can produce a significant flux of high energy neutrinos, photons and cosmic rays. According to the prevailing understanding of cosmic string dynamics in an expanding Universe, the…
String cosmology models predict a cosmic background of gravitational waves produced during a period of dilaton-driven inflation. I describe the background, present astrophysical and cosmological bounds on it, and discuss in some detail how…
We re-visit the production of cosmic rays by cusps on cosmic strings. If a scalar field (``Higgs'') has a linear interaction with the string world-sheet, such as would occur if there is a bosonic condensate on the string, cusps on string…
We consider the gravitationally induced particle production from the quantum vacuum which is defined by a free, massless and minimally coupled scalar field during the formation of a gauge cosmic string. Previous discussions of this topic…
To understand the properties of a possible cosmic string network requires knowledge of the structures on long strings, which control the breaking off of smaller loops. These structures are influenced by backreaction due to gravitational…
Cosmic strings are predicted to form kinks and cusps that travel along the string at close to the speed of light. These disturbances are radiated away as highly beamed gravitational waves that produce a burst like pulse as the cone of…
For the first time we analyse gravitational-wave strain data using waveforms constructed from strong gravity simulations of cosmic string loops collapsing to Schwarzschild black holes; a previously unconsidered source. Since the expected…
We revisit the idea that cosmic strings could source fast radio bursts by taking into account Lorentz boosts and a weaker assumption about the scaling law for the energy of particle decay. We show that the distance relation and time scale,…
We fully classify the phenomenology of gravitational wave emission from scaling cosmic string networks with varying tension and compute the spectral indices of the resulting stochastic backgrounds. In string compactifications, periods of…
Rapid advancement in the observation of cosmic strings has been made in recent years placing increasingly stringent constraints on their properties, with $G\mu\lesssim 10^{-11}$ from Pulsar Timing Array (PTA). Cosmic string loops with low…
We study the impact of fragmentation on the cosmic string loop number density, using an approach inspired by the three-scale model and a Boltzmann equation. We build a new formulation designed to be more amenable to numerical resolution and…
The thin string limit of Cosmic Strings is investigated using a description in terms of Colombeau's theory of nonlinear generalised functions. It is shown that in this description the energy-momentum tensor has a well defined thin string…
Cosmic string cusps are sources of short-lived, linearly polarised gravitational wave bursts which can be searched for in gravitational wave detectors. We assess the capability of LISA to detect these bursts using the latest LISA…
Cosmic strings are expected to form loops. These can act as seeds for accretion of dark matter, leading to the formation of ultracompact minihalos (UCMHs). We perform a detailed study of the accretion of dark matter onto cosmic string loops…
Numerical simulations of Nambu-Goto cosmic strings in an expanding universe show that the loop distribution relaxes to an universal configuration, the so-called scaling regime, which is of power law shape on large scales. Precise…
We place direct upper limits on the amplitude of gravitational waves from 28 isolated radio pulsars by a coherent multi-detector analysis of the data collected during the second science run of the LIGO interferometric detectors. These are…
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…