Textures in Dilaton Gravity

TL;DR

This paper investigates how textures in dilaton gravity influence spacetime structure, revealing conditions for non-singular solutions and the effects of massive versus massless dilatons on the gravitational field.

Contribution

It analyzes the field equations of textures in superstring gravity with arbitrary dilaton coupling, highlighting differences between massive and massless dilaton cases and their impact on spacetime.

Findings

Non-singular spacetimes exist for massless dilaton under specific conditions.

Massive dilaton induces a long-range dilaton cloud around the texture.

Gravitational behavior in the massive dilaton case resembles Einstein theory.

Abstract

We examine the field equations of a self-gravitating texture in low-energy superstring gravity, allowing for an arbitrary coupling of the texture field to the dilaton. Both massive and massless dilatons are considered. For the massless dilaton non-singular spacetimes exist, but only for certain values of the coupling, dependent on the gravitational strength of the texture; moreover, this non-singular behaviour exists only in a certain frame. For the massive dilaton, the texture induces a long-range dilaton cloud, but we expect the gravitational behaviour of the defect to be similar to that found in Einstein theory. We compare these results with those found for other global topological defects.