Massless Cosmic Strings in Expanding Universe

Abstract

Circular massless cosmic strings which move with the speed of light in the de Sitter universe are described. Construction of the background geometry is based on parabolic isometries of the de Sitter spacetime. Microscopic circular cosmic strings may appear at the Planck epoch and then grow up to the Hubble size. We analyze: images of the strings, influence of strings on trajectories of matter, formation of overdensities, and shifts of energies of photons. These effects allow one to discriminate massless strings from their massive cousins. The present work extends our results on straight massless cosmic strings in Minkowsky spacetime to curved backgrounds.