Abstract
Constraints on the tension and the abundance of cosmic strings depend crucially on the rate at which they decay into particles and gravitational radiation. We study the decay of cosmic string loops in the Abelian-Higgs model by performing field theory simulations of loop formation and evolution. We find that our set of string loops emits particle radiation primarily due to kink collisions, and that the decay time due to these losses is proportional to with where is the loop length. In contrast, the decay time to gravitational radiation scales in proportion to , and we conclude that particle emission is the primary energy loss mechanism for loops smaller than a critical length scale, while gravitational losses dominate for larger loops.
- Received 12 March 2019
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.122.201301
Published by the American Physical Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license. Further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the published article’s title, journal citation, and DOI. Funded by SCOAP3.
Published by the American Physical Society