Impact on orbital period of X-ray Binary system attached to a cosmic string

TL;DR

This paper explores how cosmic strings interacting with black holes in X-ray binary systems can cause observable changes in orbital periods, proposing a novel detection method based on mass loss effects.

Contribution

It introduces a new methodology to detect cosmic strings through orbital period changes in X-ray binaries, linking observed phenomena to cosmic string tension.

Findings

Orbital period changes of order 10^{-10} can be explained by cosmic strings with tension ~10^{-17}.

Significant observable effects occur for string tension ~10^{-11}.

Proposes a novel observational approach to detect cosmic strings via X-ray binary systems.

Abstract

Cosmic strings attached to rotating black holes extract its rotational energy, resulting in a mass loss and reduced spin. In this paper we discuss the proposed methods to detect these phenomena and present a novel methodology based on existing literature, by considering a Low Mass X-ray binary system. We investigate the impact of a cosmic string interacting with a black hole in an X-ray binary system and attempt to explain the observations of unexpected orbital period changes in such systems by proposing mass loss by cosmic strings to be a potential cause. For a period change of order $10^{-10}$, the string tension is $\sim 10^{-17}$, lying in the predicted range for cosmic string tension. An analysis of multiple low mass X-ray binary systems is carried out and it is shown that a significant and observable change occurs for a string tension $\sim 10^{-11}$.