Reionization from cosmic string loops

Abstract

Loops formed from a cosmic string network at early times would act as seeds for early formation of halos, which would form galaxies and lead to early reionization. With reasonable guesses about astrophysical and string parameters, the cosmic string scale $G\mu$ must be no more than about $3\times 10^{-8}$ to avoid conflict with the reionization redshift found by WMAP. The bound is much stronger for superstring models with a small string reconnection probability. For values near the bound, cosmic string loops may explain the discrepancy between the WMAP value and theoretical expectations.

7 pp., RevTeX, no figures

References in corpus (2)

• Implications of WMAP 3 Year Data for the Sources of Reionization
• Astronomy: Trouble at first light

Cited by in corpus (9)

• Analytic Study of Small Scale Structure on Cosmic Strings
• Gauge k-vortices
• Cosmic String Structure at the Gravitational Radiation Scale
• Cosmic String Loops, Large and Small
• Cosmic String Loops and Gravitational Radiation
• Cosmic String Detection via Microlensing of Stars
• The circular loop equation of a cosmic string with time-varying tension
• The circular loop equation of a cosmic string with time-varying tension in de Sitter spacetimes
• Analytic Approaches to the Study of Small Scale Structure on Cosmic String Networks