Cosmic Strings Stabilized by Quantum Fluctuations

TL;DR

This paper calculates quantum corrections to cosmic string energy, demonstrating that charged strings can be stabilized by fermion quantum effects within models akin to the standard model.

Contribution

It introduces a method to compute fermion quantum corrections to cosmic strings and shows that charged strings can be stabilized by these effects.

Findings

Charged cosmic strings are stabilized by quantum fermion corrections.

Quantum corrections are essential for accurate energy calculations of cosmic strings.

Stability of strings depends on fermion charge states.

Abstract

We compute fermion quantum corrections to the energy of cosmic strings. A number of rather technical tools is needed to formulate this correction and we employ isospin and gauge invariance to verify consistency of these tools. These corrections must also be included when computing the energy of strings that are charged by populating fermion bound states in its background. We find that charged strings are dynamically stabilized in theories similar to the standard model of particle physics.