• DOI:10.1103/PhysRevD.99.083522
• Corpus ID: 119387300

Type I Abelian Higgs strings: Evolution and cosmic microwave background constraints

@article{Hindmarsh2019TypeIA,
  title={Type I Abelian Higgs strings: Evolution and cosmic microwave background constraints},
  author={Mark Hindmarsh and Joanes Lizarraga and Jon Urrestilla and David Daverio and Martin Kunz},
  journal={Physical Review D},
  year={2019}
}

• M. Hindmarsh, J. Lizarraga, +2 authors M. Kunz
• Published 20 December 2018
• Physics
• Physical Review D

We present results from the first simulations of networks of Type I Abelian Higgs cosmic strings to include both matter and radiation eras and Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) constraints. In Type I strings, the string tension is a slowly decreasing function of the ratio of the scalar and gauge mass-squared,β. We find that the mean string separation shows no dependence on β, and that the energy-momentum tensor correlators decrease approximately in proportion to the square of the string tension, with additional O(1) correction factors which asymptote to constants below β≲0.01. Strings in models with low self-couplings can therefore satisfy current CMB bounds at higher symmetry-breaking scales. This is particularly relevant for models where the gauge symmetry is broken in a supersymmetric flat direction, for which the effective self-coupling can be extremely small. If our results can be extrapolated to β≃10−15,even strings formed at 10-16 GeV (approximately the grand unification scale in supersymmetric extensions of the Standard Model) can be compatible with CMB constraints.