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Centro de Astrofísica da Universidade do Porto
22-26 August 2011, Porto, Portugal

 

Detection of cosmic superstrings by test particle motion
Hartmann, Betti (Jacobs University Bremen)

It was believed for a long time that the fundamental entities of String Theory are not observable on cosmic scales. However, inflationary models that result from String Theory almost always predict the production of cosmic superstrings at the end of inflation. The objects formed are so-called D- and F-strings, where D stands for Dirichlet and F for fundamental. Also bound states of p F- and q D-strings, so-called p-q-strings are possible. It is thus of great importance to understand how such objects can be detected in the universe. Considerable effort has been put into the prediction of cosmic superstring signatures in the Cosmic Microwave background (CMB). In this talk, I will discuss another possibility to detect cosmic superstrings, namely through the way that test particles move in their space-time. I will first present solutions to the geodesic equation in the space-time of black holes pierced by infinitely thin cosmic strings in which case the solutions can be given explicitly in terms of elliptic functions. I will then discuss our results for the space-time of finite width cosmic strings, in particular for the space-time of field theoretical p-q-strings. In the latter case, the solutions of the geodesic equation have to be computed numerically.