2005/12/22 by A. Avgoustidis, E. P. S. Shellard · 1 citation
Physics and Astronomy · #astro-ph #hep-ph #hep-th
paper · pdf · doi:10.1103/physrevd.73.041301
published as Phys.Rev.D73:041301,2006 · 6 pages, 4 figures
arxiv created 2005/12/22 · arxiv updated 2009/12/01
We perform numerical simulations of cosmic string evolution with intercommuting probability P in the range 5× 10-3≤ P≤ 1, both in the matter and radiation eras, using a modified version of the Allen-Shellard code. We find that the dependence of the scaling density on P is significantly different than the suggested ρ∝ P-1 form. In particular, for probabilities greater than P≃ 0.1, ρ(1/P) is approximately flat, but for P less than this value it is well-fitted by a power-law with exponent 0.6+0.15-0.12. This shows that the enhancement of string densities due to a small intercommuting probability is much less prominent than initially anticipated. We interpret the flat part of ρ(1/P) in terms of multiple opportunities for string reconnections during one crossing time, due to small-scale wiggles. We also propose a two-scale model incorporating the key physical mechanisms, which satisfactorily fits our results over the whole range of P covered by the simulations.