2013/08/26 by Robert Brandenberger, Brandenberger, Robert, Nick Park +3 · 1 citation
Physics and Astronomy · #Cosmology and Gravitation Theories #Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics (astro-ph.CO) #FOS: Physical sciences #General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology (gr-qc) #High Energy Physics - Phenomenology (hep-ph) #High Energy Physics - Theory (hep-th) #Pulsars and Gravitational Waves Research #Radio Astronomy Observations and Technology #astro-ph.CO #gr-qc #hep-ph #hep-th
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.1308.5693
10 pages, 4 figures
arxiv created 2013/08/26 · openalex publication_date 2013/08/26 · arxiv updated 2013/08/28 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
Cosmic string wakes produce direct B-mode polarization at leading order in cosmological perturbation theory, as worked out in a previous publication \citeBDH in the case of a single string wake. Here we compute the angular power spectrum of B-mode polarization from a scaling distribution of string wakes. We find that the averaging which enters in computing the power spectrum renders the signal, which is distinctive in position space maps, too small in amplitude to be detectable with the first generation B-mode surveys. In addition, the spectral shape is similar to that of gravitational lensing, making it additionally difficult to detect the cosmic string signal from the angular power spectrum. Hence, a more promising way to constrain cosmic strings using B-mode polarization is by analyzing position space maps using novel algorithms such as the Canny algorithm.