Site Map
Contacts
Follow us on Facebook Follow us on Twitter YouTube channel
Centro de Astrofísica da Universidade do Porto

Limits on cosmic chiral vortons

C. J. A. P. Martins, E. P. S. Shellard

Abstract
We study chiral vorton production for Witten-type superconducting string models in the context of a recently developed analytic formalism. We delineate three distinct scenarios: First, a low energy regime (including the electroweak scale) where vortons can be a source of dark matter. Secondly, an intermediate energy regime where the vorton density is too high to be compatible with the standard cosmology (thereby excluding these models). Finally, a high energy regime (including the GUT scale) in which no vortons are expected to form. The vorton density is most sensitive to the order of the string-forming phase transition and relatively insensitive to the current-forming transition. For a second-order string transition, vorton production is cosmologically disastrous for the range 10−28 ≲ Gμ ≲ 10−10 (105 GeV ≲ Tc ≲ 1014 GeV), while for the first-order case we can only exclude 10−20 ≲ Gμ ≲ 10−14 (109 GeV ≲ Tc ≲ 1012 GeV). We provide a fitting formula which summarises our results.

Physics Letters B
Volume 445, Page 43
December 1998

>> ADS

Institute of Astrophysics and Space Sciences

Institute of Astrophysics and Space Sciences (IA) is a new but long anticipated research infrastructure with a national dimension. It embodies a bold but feasible vision for the development of Astronomy, Astrophysics and Space Sciences in Portugal, taking full advantage and fully realizing the potential created by the national membership of the European Space Agency (ESA) and the European Southern Observatory (ESO). IA resulted from the merging the two most prominent research units in the field in Portugal: the Centre for Astrophysics of the University of Porto (CAUP) and the Center for Astronomy and Astrophysics of the University of Lisbon (CAAUL). It currently hosts more than two-thirds of all active researchers working in Space Sciences in Portugal, and is responsible for an even greater fraction of the national productivity in international ISI journals in the area of Space Sciences. This is the scientific area with the highest relative impact factor (1.65 times above the international average) and the field with the highest average number of citations per article for Portugal.

Proceed on CAUP's website|Go to IA website