Repeated Gravitational Wave Bursts from Cosmic Strings

TL;DR

This paper discusses how cosmic string loops produce repeated gravitational wave bursts, which can be used to improve detection prospects and distinguish waveform parameters in future GW observations.

Contribution

It highlights the repeated nature of GW bursts from cosmic strings and estimates the number of repeaters detectable by LVK and LISA, enhancing detection strategies.

Findings

Repeated GW bursts from cosmic strings are always from the same sky position.

Detection sensitivity to string tension scales with the sixth power of detector sensitivity.

Repeated bursts aid in distinguishing waveform parameters and sky localization.

Abstract

A characteristic observational signature of cosmic strings are short duration gravitational wave (GW) bursts. These have been searched for by the LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA (LVK) collaboration, and will be searched for with LISA. We point out that these burst signals are repeated, since cosmic string loops evolve quasi-periodically in time, and will always appear from essentially the same position in the sky. We estimate the number of GW repeaters for LVK and LISA, and show that the string tension that can be probed scales as detector sensitivity to the sixth power, which raises hope for detection in future GW detectors. The observation of repeated GW bursts from the same cosmic string loop helps distinguish between the GW waveform parameters and the sky-localization.