Chiral Vortons and Cosmological Constraints on Particle Physics

TL;DR

This paper explores the cosmological implications of chiral vortons, stable current-carrying string loops, deriving constraints on particle physics theories, especially supersymmetric models, based on their predicted vorton abundance and stability.

Contribution

It provides the first detailed analysis of chiral vortons in supersymmetric theories and establishes more stringent cosmological constraints on these models.

Findings

Chiral vortons are more stable than non-chiral ones.

Cosmological observations impose tight constraints on chiral vorton abundance.

Constraints on supersymmetric theories are significantly strengthened.

Abstract

We investigate the cosmological consequences of particle physics theories that admit stable loops of current-carrying string - vortons. In particular, we consider chiral theories where a single fermion zero mode is excited in the string core, such as those arising in supersymmetric theories with a D-term. The resulting vortons formed in such theories are expected to be more stable than their non-chiral cousins. General symmetry breaking schemes are considered in which strings formed at one symmetry breaking scale become current-carrying at a subsequent phase transition. The vorton abundance is estimated and constraints placed on the underlying particle physics theories from cosmological observations. Our constraints on the chiral theory are considerably more stringent than the previous estimates for more general theories.