Cosmic Sparks from Superconducting Strings

Journal Article · Fri Oct 03 00:00:00 EDT 2008 · Physical Review Letters

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PHYSREVLETT.101.141301· OSTI ID:21179764

Vachaspati, Tanmay ^[1]

---

1. Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, New Jersey 08540 (United States)

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 {approx}10{sup 5} GeV. The superconducting string model predicts an event rate that falls off only as S{sup -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.

• OSTI ID: 21179764
• Journal Information: Physical Review Letters, Vol. 101, Issue 14; Other Information: DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.101.141301; (c) 2008 The American Physical Society; Country of input: International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA); ISSN 0031-9007
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS
GRAND UNIFIED THEORY
STRING MODELS
STRING THEORY
SUPERCONDUCTIVITY
TEV RANGE 100-1000