Shape of cosmic string loops

Journal Article · Sat Jan 15 00:00:00 EST 2011 · Physical Review. D, Particles Fields

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PHYSREVD.83.023529· OSTI ID:21513069

Copi, Craig J; Vachaspati, Tanmay ^[1]

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1. CERCA, Department of Physics, Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, Ohio 44106-7079 (United States)

Complicated cosmic string loops will fragment until they reach simple, nonintersecting ('stable') configurations. Through extensive numerical study we characterize these attractor loop shapes including their length, velocity, kink, and cusp distributions. We find that an initial loop containing M harmonic modes will, on average, split into 3M stable loops. These stable loops are approximately described by the degenerate kinky loop, which is planar and rectangular, independently of the number of modes on the initial loop. This is confirmed by an analytic construction of a stable family of perturbed degenerate kinky loops. The average stable loop is also found to have a 40% chance of containing a cusp. We examine the properties of stable loops of different lengths and find only slight variation. Finally we develop a new analytic scheme to explicitly solve the string constraint equations.

• OSTI ID: 21513069
• Journal Information: Physical Review. D, Particles Fields, Vol. 83, Issue 2; Other Information: DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevD.83.023529; (c) 2011 American Institute of Physics; ISSN 0556-2821
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS
COSMOLOGICAL MODELS
CUSPED GEOMETRIES
DISTRIBUTION
EQUATIONS
NUMERICAL ANALYSIS
SIMULATION
STRING MODELS
VELOCITY
COMPOSITE MODELS
EXTENDED PARTICLE MODEL
MAGNETIC FIELD CONFIGURATIONS
MATHEMATICAL MODELS
MATHEMATICS
OPEN CONFIGURATIONS
PARTICLE MODELS
QUARK MODEL