Reheating and Cosmic String Production

TL;DR

This paper calculates the rate of cosmic string production at the end of inflation, finding that highly excited strings are rarely produced, implying slow-roll inflation alone does not generate cosmic strings.

Contribution

It provides a detailed computation of string production rate during inflation using a near-de Sitter spectrum, clarifying the conditions for cosmic string formation.

Findings

Highly excited strings are rarely produced at inflation's end

Slow-roll inflation alone is insufficient for cosmic string generation

The string spectrum in near-de Sitter space informs production rates

Abstract

We compute the string production rate at the end of inflation, using the string spectrum obtained in \lss in a near-de Sitter space. Our result shows that highly excited strings are hardly produced, thus the simple slow-roll inflation alone does not offer a cosmic string production mechanism.