TY - JOUR
T1 - Cosmic sparks from superconducting strings
AU - Vachaspati, Tanmay
PY - 2008/9/29
Y1 - 2008/9/29
N2 - We investigate cosmic sparks from cusps on superconducting cosmic strings in light of the recently discovered millisecond radio burst by Lorimer et al.. We find that the observed duration, fluence, spectrum, and event rate can be reasonably explained by grand unification scale superconducting cosmic strings that carry currents ∼105GeV. The superconducting string model predicts an event rate that falls off only as S-1/2, where S is the energy flux, and hence predicts a population of very bright bursts. Other surveys, with different observational parameters, are shown to impose tight constraints on the superconducting string model.
AB - We investigate cosmic sparks from cusps on superconducting cosmic strings in light of the recently discovered millisecond radio burst by Lorimer et al.. We find that the observed duration, fluence, spectrum, and event rate can be reasonably explained by grand unification scale superconducting cosmic strings that carry currents ∼105GeV. The superconducting string model predicts an event rate that falls off only as S-1/2, where S is the energy flux, and hence predicts a population of very bright bursts. Other surveys, with different observational parameters, are shown to impose tight constraints on the superconducting string model.
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U2 - 10.1103/PhysRevLett.101.141301
DO - 10.1103/PhysRevLett.101.141301
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:53449083628
VL - 101
JO - Physical Review Letters
JF - Physical Review Letters
SN - 0031-9007
IS - 14
M1 - 141301
ER -