Observational constraints on cosmic string production during brane inflation

By Levon Pogosian, S. Tye, I. Wasserman, Mark Wyman. 2003

183 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Overall, brane inflation is compatible with the recent analysis of the Wilkinson microwave anisotropy probe (WMAP) data. Here we explore the constraints of WMAP and the 2dF Galaxy Redshift Survey (2dFGRS) data on the various brane inflationary scenarios. Brane inflation naturally ends with the production of cosmic strings, which may provide a way to distinguish these models observationally. We argue that currently available data cannot exclude a non-negligible contribution from cosmic strings definitively. We perform a partial statistical analysis of mixed models that include a subdominant contribution from cosmic strings. Although the data favor models without cosmic strings, we conclude that they cannot definitively rule out a cosmic-string-induced contribution of $\ensuremath{\sim}10%$ to the observed temperature, polarization and galaxy density fluctuations. These results imply that $G\ensuremath{\mu}\ensuremath{\lesssim}1.3\ifmmode\times\else\texttimes\fi{}{10}^{\ensuremath{-}6}\sqrt{B\ensuremath{\lambda}/0.1},$ where $\ensuremath{\lambda}l~1$ is a measure of the intercommutation probability of the cosmic string networks and B measures the importance of perturbations induced by cosmic strings. We argue that, conservatively, the data available currently still permit $B\ensuremath{\lesssim}0.1.$ Precision measurements sensitive to the B-mode polarization produced by vector density perturbation modes driven by the string network could provide evidence for these models. Accurate determinations of ${n}_{s}(k),$ the scalar fluctuation index, could also distinguish among various brane inflation models.

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/66fb2dbdf519449a53b7e2cccc42e84614c45379

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Citations in the corpus

Towards inflation in string theory (2003, background): “Here we will show that one of the possible problems of this scenario, the overproduction of cosmic strings [42,43], is ameliorated by the warped geometry.”
Collisions of cosmic F- and D-strings (2004, background): “These can be produced after inflation [2-7], and in some models they are stable or at least metastable on cosmic time scales [8, 9].”