Excited cosmic strings with superconducting currents

TL;DR

This paper analyzes excited cosmic strings with superconducting currents, exploring their internal excitations, effects of gauge fields, and implications for cosmic evolution and observable phenomena.

Contribution

It provides a detailed analysis of excited superconducting cosmic strings, including their internal excitations, coupling to gauge fields, and impact on spacetime and cosmic signals.

Findings

Excited condensates persist with electromagnetic coupling.

Excitations modify the local scalar curvature.

Results impact cosmic string network evolution and observations.

Abstract

We present a detailed analysis of {\it excited} cosmic string solutions which possess superconducting currents. These currents can be excited inside the string core, and - if the condensate is large enough - can lead to the excitations of the Higgs field. Next to the case with global unbroken symmetry, we discuss also the effects of the gauging of this symmetry and show that excited condensates persist when coupled to an electromagnetic field. The space-time of such strings is also constructed by solving the Einstein equations numerically and we show how the local scalar curvature is modified by the excitation. We consider the relevance of our results on the cosmic string network evolution as well as observations of primordial gravitational waves and cosmic rays.