Dark strings

Recent astrophysical observations have motivated novel theoretical models of the dark matter sector. A class of such models predicts the existence of GeV scale cosmic strings that communicate with the standard model sector by Aharonov-Bohm interactions with electrically charged particles. We discuss the cosmology of these "dark strings" and investigate possible observational signatures. More elaborate dark sector models are argued to contain hybrid topological defects that may also have observational signatures.