Cosmic string loops: Large and small, but not tiny

Vitaly Vanchurin

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

21 Scopus citations

Abstract

We develop an analytical model to study the production spectrum of loops in the cosmic string network. In the scaling regime, we find two different scales corresponding to large (one order below horizon) and small (few orders below horizon) loops. The very small (tiny) loops at the gravitational backreaction scale are absent, and thus, our model has no ultraviolet divergences. We calculate the spectrum of loops and derive analytical expressions for the positions and magnitudes of the small and large scale peaks. The small loops are produced by large bursts of similar loops moving with very high velocities in the same direction. We describe the shape of the large loops, which would usually consist of few kinks and few cusps per oscillation cycle. We also argue that the typical size of large loops is set by the correlation length, which does not depend on the intercommutation probability p, while the interstring distance scales as p1/3.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Article number063532
JournalPhysical Review D - Particles, Fields, Gravitation and Cosmology
Volume77
Issue number6
DOIs
StatePublished - Mar 27 2008

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