2024/04/19 by S. Mukovnikov, Mukovnikov, S., L. Sousa +1 · 1 citation
Earth and Planetary Sciences · Physics and Astronomy · #Cosmology and Gravitation Theories #Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics (astro-ph.CO) #FOS: Physical sciences #Geophysics and Gravity Measurements #High Energy Physics - Theory (hep-th) #Pulsars and Gravitational Waves Research
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2404.13213
openalex publication_date 2024/04/19 · openalex created_date 2024/04/24 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/01
We include the effect of the frictional force caused by interactions between cosmic strings and the particles of the background plasma in the computation of the stochastic gravitational wave background generated by cosmic string loops. Although our results show that friction leads to a partial suppression of the emission of gravitational radiation by cosmic string loops, we also find that loop production is very intense in the early stages of the Kibble regime. We show that, in many instances, this leads to a prominent signature of friction in the ultra-high frequency range of the spectrum, in the form of a secondary peak. The signature of friction is not only sensitive to cosmic string properties, but also to the initial conditions of the network and its surroundings. A detection of this signature would then allow us to extract information about the physics of the early universe that cannot be uncovered when probing the rest of the stochastic gravitational wave background spectrum.