On the gravitational, dilatonic and axionic radiative damping of cosmic strings

Abstract

We study the radiation reaction on cosmic strings due to the emission of dilatonic, gravitational and axionic waves. After verifying the (on average) conservative nature of the time-symmetric self-interactions, we concentrate on the finite radiation damping force associated with the half-retarded minus half-advanced ``reactive'' fields. We revisit a recent proposal of using a ``local back reaction approximation'' for the reactive fields. Using dimensional continuation as convenient technical tool, we find, contrary to previous claims, that this proposal leads to antidamping in the case of the axionic field, and to zero (integrated) damping in the case of the gravitational field. One gets normal positive damping only in the case of the dilatonic field. We propose to use a suitably modified version of the local dilatonic radiation reaction as a substitute for the exact (non-local) gravitational radiation reaction. The incorporation of such a local approximation to gravitational radiation reaction should allow one to complete, in a computationally non-intensive way, string network simulations and to give better estimates of the amount and spectrum of gravitational radiation emitted by a cosmologically evolving network of massive strings.

48 pages, RevTex, epsfig, 1 figure; clarification of the domain of validity of the perturbative derivation of the string equations of motion, and of their renormalizability

References in corpus (3)

• Effective action and tension renormalization for cosmic and fundamental strings
• Non-divergence of gravitational self-interactions for Goto-Nambu strings
• Electromagnetic self interaction in strings

Cited by in corpus (12)

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• Radiative contributions to gravitational scattering
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• Effective action and tension renormalization for cosmic and fundamental strings
• Gravitational backreaction on a cosmic string: Formalism
• Cosmic String Loop Microlensing
• Topological Defects and CMB anisotropies : Are the predictions reliable ?
• Nonlinear gravitational-wave memory from cusps and kinks on cosmic strings
• Linearized self-forces for branes
• Duality and Decay of Macroscopic F-Strings
• Dynamics of self-interacting strings and energy-momentum conservation