Cosmic Strings Stabilized by Quantum Fluctuations

Abstract

We compute fermion quantum corrections to the energy of cosmic strings. A number of rather technical tools is needed to formulate this correction and we employ isospin and gauge invariance to verify consistency of these tools. These corrections must also be included when computing the energy of strings that are charged by populating fermion bound states in its background. We find that charged strings are dynamically stabilized in theories similar to the standard model of particle physics.