Constraints on superconducting cosmic strings from early reionization

Abstract

Electromagnetic radiation from superconducting cosmic string loops can reionize neutral hydrogen in the Universe at very early epochs, and affect the cosmic microwave background temperature and polarization correlation functions at large angular scales. We constrain the string tension and current using WMAP7 data, and compare with earlier constraints that employed cosmic microwave background spectral distortions. Over a wide range of string tensions, the current on the string has to be less than $10 7 GeV.

Ionization from cosmic strings at cosmic dawn

“…In this work, we have considered non-superconducting strings. Superconducting strings lead to a larger effect, as studied in [23].…”

“…To estimate the correction to the ionization fraction of hydrogen due to cosmic strings, will follow the approach taken in [23]. Assuming that one photon in the frequency interval between ω i and ω f emitted from the string loop ionizes one hydrogen atom, we can derive the following expression for the ionization fraction due to cosmic strings:…”

CMB spectral μ-distortion of multiple inflation scenario

“…decaying or annihilating particles [39][40][41][42][43], reionization and structure formation [44][45][46][47][48][49][50][51], primordial black holes [52][53][54], cosmic strings [55][56][57][58], small-scale magnetic fields [59][60][61][62], the adiabatic cooling of matter [19,63], cosmological recombination [64][65][66][67][68][69], gravitino decay [70], and the dissipation of primordial density perturbations [20,21,[71][72][73][74][75][76][77][78][79][80][81] which is the main concern of this paper. Types of spectral distortions are characterized by the redshifts at which energy releases to CMB photons:…”

Note on structure formation from cosmic string wakes

“…Signals from structures seeded by string loops have been studied in a recent paper by Schlaer et al [33] (see also [34] for earlier work) who found that loops could cause significant star formation to occur at high redshift. Therefore cosmic strings with enough mass will have an impact on the epoch of reionization [35,36]. String loops would also seed dense dark matter clumps.…”