1996/04/30 by Roland A. Puntigam, Harald H. Soleng · 1 citation
Physics and Astronomy · #gr-qc
paper · pdf · doi:10.1088/0264-9381/14/5/017
published as Class.Quant.Grav. 14 (1997) 1129-1149 · 24 pages, LaTeX, 9 eps figures; remarks on energy conditions added, discussion extended, version to be published in Class. Quantum Grav
arxiv created 1997/02/15 · arxiv updated 2016/08/31
Cosmic strings, as topological spacetime defects, show striking resemblance to defects in solid continua: distortions, which can be classified into disclinations and dislocations, are line-like defects characterized by a delta function-valued curvature and torsion distribution giving rise to rotational and translational holonomy. We exploit this analogy and investigate how distortions can be adapted in a systematic manner from solid state systems to Einstein-Cartan gravity. As distortions are efficiently described within the framework of a SO(3) \rlap⊃× T(3) gauge theory of solid continua with line defects, we are led in a straightforward way to a Poincaré gauge approach to gravity which is a natural framework for introducing the notion of distorted spacetimes. Constructing all ten possible distorted spacetimes, we recover, inter alia, the well-known exterior spacetime of a spin-polarized cosmic string as a special case of such a geometry. In a second step, we search for matter distributions which, in Einstein-Cartan gravity, act as sources of distorted spacetimes. The resulting solutions, appropriately matched to the distorted vacua, are cylindrically symmetric and are interpreted as spin-polarized cosmic strings and cosmic dislocations.