Cosmic (super)strings with a time-varying tension
arXiv:2411.04186 · doi:10.1088/1475-7516/2025/04/049
Abstract
Cosmic (super)strings offer promising ways to test ideas about the early universe and physics at high energies. While in field theory constructions their tension is usually assumed to be constant (or at most slowly-varying), this is often not the case in the context of String Theory. Indeed, the tensions of both fundamental and field theory strings within a string compactification depend on the expectation values of the moduli, which in turn can vary with time. We discuss how the evolution of a cosmic string network changes with a time-dependent tension, both for long-strings and closed loops, by providing an appropriate generalisation of the Velocity One Scale (VOS) model and its implications. The resulting phenomenology is very rich, exhibiting novel features such as growing loops, percolation and a radiation-like behaviour of the long string network. We conclude with a few remarks on the impact for gravitational wave emission.
25 pages + appendix, 2 figures. Comments welcome! v2: clarifications added. Matches published version
References in corpus (81)
- The Hierarchy Problem and New Dimensions at a Millimeter
- de Sitter Vacua in String Theory
- Hierarchies from Fluxes in String Compactifications
- Axions In String Theory
- The NANOGrav 15-year Data Set: Evidence for a Gravitational-Wave Background
- Cosmic strings
- The String Landscape, Black Holes and Gravity as the Weakest Force
- Towards Inflation in String Theory
- Systematics of Moduli Stabilisation in Calabi-Yau Flux Compactifications
- Brane Inflation
- Cosmological Backgrounds of Gravitational Waves
- M Theory, Orientifolds and G-Flux
- The NANOGrav 15-year Data Set: Search for Signals from New Physics
- The NANOGrav 12.5-year Data Set: Search For An Isotropic Stochastic Gravitational-Wave Background
- Cosmic String Production Towards the End of Brane Inflation
- Cosmic F- and D-strings
- The Inflationary Brane-Antibrane Universe
- Gravitational radiation from cosmic (super)strings: bursts, stochastic background, and observational windows
- The type IIB string axiverse and its low-energy phenomenology
- Large-Volume Flux Compactifications: Moduli Spectrum and D3/D7 Soft Supersymmetry Breaking
- Challenges and Opportunities of Gravitational Wave Searches at MHz to GHz Frequencies
- The QCD Axion and Moduli Stabilisation
- The number of cosmic string loops
- Quantitative String Evolution
- Probing the gravitational wave background from cosmic strings with LISA
- Extending the Velocity-dependent One-scale String Evolution Model
- Axions from Strings: the Attractive Solution
- The Production, Spectrum and Evolution of Cosmic Strings in Brane Inflation
- Brane Interaction as the Origin of Inflation
- The First Three Seconds: a Review of Possible Expansion Histories of the Early Universe
- More Axions from Strings
- Stochastic gravitational wave background from smoothed cosmic string loops
- Observational Constraints on Cosmic String Production During Brane Inflation
- Cosmic Strings and Superstrings
- Collisions of Cosmic F- and D-strings
- On the Evolution of Abelian-Higgs String Networks
- Probing the pre-BBN universe with gravitational waves from cosmic strings
- Beyond the Standard Models with Cosmic Strings
- Evolution of cosmic string configurations
- Cosmic Archaeology with Gravitational Waves from Cosmic Strings
- CMB constraints on cosmic strings and superstrings
- Volume Modulus Inflation and the Gravitino Mass Problem
- Scaling from gauge and scalar radiation in Abelian Higgs string networks
- A Note on the evolution of cosmic string/superstring networks
- Effect of Reconnection Probability on Cosmic (Super)string Network Density
- Fingerprint of Low-Scale Leptogenesis in the Primordial Gravitational-Wave Spectrum
- Swampland Conjectures for Strings and Membranes
- Stringy Effects During Inflation and Reheating
- Comparison of cosmic string and superstring models to NANOGrav 12.5-year results
- Stochastic Gravitational Wave Background generated by Cosmic String Networks: Velocity-Dependent One-Scale model versus Scale-Invariant Evolution
- String Thermodynamics in D-Brane Backgrounds
- Loop decay in Abelian-Higgs string networks
- Probing Cosmic Superstrings with Gravitational Waves
- Spectrum of global string networks and the axion dark matter mass
- The evolution of a network of cosmic string loops
- Scaling properties of cosmological axion strings
- Scaling configurations of cosmic superstring networks and their cosmological implications
- Extending and Calibrating the Velocity dependent One-Scale model for Cosmic Strings with One Thousand Field Theory Simulations
- Cosmic strings from pure Yang-Mills theory
- Ultrahigh frequency primordial gravitational waves beyond the kHz: The case of cosmic strings
- Catch-Me-If-You-Can: The Overshoot Problem and the Weak/Inflation Hierarchy
- Multi-messenger constraints on Abelian-Higgs cosmic string networks
- Gravitational Waves from Current-Carrying Cosmic Strings
- Cosmic F- and D-strings from pure Yang-Mills theory
- Gravitational Wave Emission from a Cosmic String Loop, I: Global Case
- Generalised velocity-dependent one-scale model for current-carrying strings
- The Standard Model from String Theory: What Have We Learned?
- Cosmological evolution of cosmic strings with time-dependent tension
- Scaling laws for weakly interacting cosmic (super)string and p-brane networks
- RG-Induced Modulus Stabilization: Perturbative de Sitter Vacua and Improved - Inflation
- Revised bounds on local cosmic strings from NANOGrav observations
- Topological Defects in Contracting Universes
- Implications of cosmic strings with time-varying tension on CMB and large scale structure
- The evolution of circular loops of a cosmic string with periodic tension
- String Thermodynamics In and Out of Equilibrium: Boltzmann Equations and Random Walks
- Cargese Lectures on Extra Dimensions
- Back to the origins of brane-antibrane inflation
- The circular loop equation of a cosmic string with time-varying tension
- Topological defects: A problem for cyclic universes?
- String Theory and the Early Universe: Constraints and Opportunities
- Extra-Dimensional Axion Expectations