Cosmic Rays and Spectral Distortions from Collapsing Textures

Abstract

We compute the energy spectrum of photons produced by the unwinding of a scaling distribution of cosmic textures, and discuss the implications for the spectrum of high energy cosmic rays, and for CMB spectral distortions. Textures lead to a contribution to the photon flux which scales as E 3 F (E) ∼ E 3/2 . Hence, the tightest constraints on the texture model come from the highest energies from which primordial photons can reach us without being scattered by the CMB and other foregrounds. Textures lead to both µ type and y type distortions. While the constraints on the texture model coming from the current COBE bounds are weaker than the bounds from the angular power spectrum of the CMB, future surveys such as PIXIE can lead to stronger bounds.

Massive black holes at high redshifts from superconducting cosmic strings

“…In three spatial dimensions, there are three classes of defects that are stable (preserved by a topological charge), domain walls from disconnected vacua, cosmic strings from a 1-sphere vacuum manifold, and monopoles from a 2-sphere vacuum manifold. Additionally, a vacuum manifold with a 3sphere topology gives rise to cosmic textures which can source interesting phenomenological signatures (for example, in the cosmic microwave background [9] [10]) even though they are not stable. In this work, we focus on an observational implication of cosmic strings.…”