Gravitational Capture of Cosmic Strings by a Black Hole

TL;DR

This paper investigates how a cosmic string interacts gravitationally with a Schwarzschild black hole, focusing on the conditions under which the string is captured based on initial velocity and impact parameter.

Contribution

It provides a numerical analysis of the string's equations of motion, revealing the relationship between initial velocity and capture impact parameter.

Findings

Capture impact parameter depends on initial velocity.

Numerical solutions describe string trajectories near the black hole.

Results inform understanding of cosmic string-black hole interactions.

Abstract

The gravitational interaction of an infinitely long cosmic string with a Schwarzschild black hole is studied. We consider a straight string that is initially at a great distance and moving at some initial velocity v (0 < v < c) towards the black hole. The equations of motion of the string are solved numerically to obtain the dependence of the capture impact parameter on the initial velocity.