Effects of gravitational back reaction on small-scale structure of cosmic strings

Jean M. Quashnock*, Tsvi Piran

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

12 Scopus citations

Abstract

We compute the gravitational back reaction on cosmic strings carrying kinks and show that it limits the growth of small-scale structure. A two-scalescaling solution results, with small-scale structure and loop formation scaling as kG times the horizon, where k50. Kinks of all opening angles decay in a time scale l/(kG), where l is the typical interkink distance. There are no more than (kG)-1 kinks per horizon length of long string. Gravitational radiation from the long strings is dominated by emission from small scales and is similar, both in frequency and amplitude, to that from loops chopped off the network.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)R3785-R3788
JournalPhysical Review D
Volume43
Issue number12
DOIs
StatePublished - 1991

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