Gravitational Capture of Cosmic Strings by a Black Hole

Abstract

The gravitational interaction of an infinitely long cosmic string with a Schwarzschild black hole is studied. We consider a straight string that is initially at a great distance and moving at some initial velocity v (0 < v < c) towards the black hole. The equations of motion of the string are solved numerically to obtain the dependence of the capture impact parameter on the initial velocity.

15 pages, 2 figures, submitted to Phys Rev D