Cosmological and astrophysical constraints on superconducting cosmic strings

TL;DR

This paper analyzes how superconducting cosmic strings could influence cosmological and astrophysical phenomena, deriving constraints from current observations and exploring detection prospects for their signatures.

Contribution

It provides the first comprehensive analysis of multiple observational constraints on superconducting cosmic strings and assesses their detectability in ongoing experiments.

Findings

Constraints exclude broad parameter regions for SCSs.

Radio wave observations can probe large SCS parameter space.

Current data limits SCS properties significantly.

Abstract

We investigate the cosmological and astrophysical constraints on superconducting cosmic strings (SCSs). SCS loops emit strong bursts of electromagnetic waves, which might affect various cosmological and astrophysical observations. We take into account the effect on the CMB anisotropy, CMB blackbody spectrum, BBN, observational implications on radio wave burst and X-ray or gamma-ray events, and stochastic gravitational wave background measured by pulsar timing experiments. We then derive constraints on the parameters of SCS from current observations and estimate prospects for detecting SCS signatures in on-going observations. As a result, we find that these constraints exclude broad parameter regions, and also that on-going radio wave observations can probe large parameter space.