Radio Broadcasts from Superconducting Strings

Abstract

Superconducting cosmic strings can give transient electromagnetic signatures that we argue are most evident at radio frequencies. We investigate the three different kinds of radio bursts from cusps, kinks, and kink-kink collisions on superconducting strings. We find that the event rate is dominated by kink bursts in a range of parameters that are of observational interest, and can be quite high (several a day at 1 Jy flux) for a canonical set of parameters. In the absence of events, the search for radio transients can place stringent constraints on superconducting cosmic strings.