Stochastic Gravitational Wave Background from Chiral Superconducting Cosmic Strings

TL;DR

This paper studies how superconducting cosmic strings emit vector radiation and how this affects the gravitational wave background, revealing that strong coupling suppresses signals while moderate coupling can produce detectable signals compatible with pulsar timing data.

Contribution

It provides a detailed analysis of vector radiation emission from chiral superconducting cosmic strings and its impact on the stochastic gravitational wave background.

Findings

Strong coupling suppresses gravitational wave signals.

Moderate coupling can produce detectable gravitational wave signals.

Superconductivity may reconcile cosmic string models with pulsar timing data.

Abstract

We investigate the emission of vector radiation by superconducting cosmic string loops, deriving general relations to characterize the vector radiation emission efficiency, and study its impact on the evolution of loops. Building on these results, we compute the stochastic gravitational wave background generated by a chiral superconducting cosmic string network. Our analysis reveals that strong coupling between superconducting cosmic strings and the vector field may lead to a substantial suppression of the gravitational wave signal, while moderate coupling may still produce a detectable signal. We demonstrate that, in this intermediate limit, the presence of superconductivity in cosmic strings may help reconcile their gravitational wave spectrum with pulsar timing array data for large enough values of current.