Cosmic strings in dilaton gravity

TL;DR

This paper investigates the properties of cosmic strings modeled as abelian-Higgs vortices within dilaton gravity, analyzing their metrics and effects on test particles across different dilaton coupling scenarios.

Contribution

It provides new solutions for cosmic string metrics in both massless and massive dilaton gravity, extending previous models in Einstein and Jordan-Brans-Dicke theories.

Findings

Derived vortex solutions in dilaton gravity with arbitrary coupling

Compared string metrics across different gravity theories

Analyzed the impact on test particles near cosmic strings

Abstract

We examine the metric of an isolated self-gravitating abelian-Higgs vortex in dilatonic gravity for arbitrary coupling of the vortex fields to the dilaton. We look for solutions in both massless and massive dilaton gravity. We compare our results to existing metrics for strings in Einstein and Jordan-Brans-Dicke theory. We explore the generalization of Bogomolnyi arguments for our vortices and comment on the effects on test particles.