TY - JOUR
T1 - Light from cosmic strings
AU - Steer, Danièle A.
AU - Vachaspati, Tanmay
N1 - Copyright:
Copyright 2011 Elsevier B.V., All rights reserved.
PY - 2011/2/25
Y1 - 2011/2/25
N2 - 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 photons from cosmic strings and find that the emission from cusps, kinks and kink-kink collisions occurs with a flat spectrum at all frequencies up to the string scale. Further, cusps emit a beam of photons, kinks emit along a curve, and the emission at a kink-kink collision is in all directions. The emission of light from cosmic strings could provide an important new observational signature of cosmic strings that is within reach of current experiments for a range of string tensions.
AB - 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 photons from cosmic strings and find that the emission from cusps, kinks and kink-kink collisions occurs with a flat spectrum at all frequencies up to the string scale. Further, cusps emit a beam of photons, kinks emit along a curve, and the emission at a kink-kink collision is in all directions. The emission of light from cosmic strings could provide an important new observational signature of cosmic strings that is within reach of current experiments for a range of string tensions.
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U2 - 10.1103/PhysRevD.83.043528
DO - 10.1103/PhysRevD.83.043528
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:79952228631
VL - 83
JO - Physical Review D - Particles, Fields, Gravitation and Cosmology
JF - Physical Review D - Particles, Fields, Gravitation and Cosmology
SN - 1550-7998
IS - 4
M1 - 043528
ER -