Vortices and cosmic strings in a generalized Born-Infeld model

Abstract

In this paper, we consider two types of topological solitons in a generalized Born-Infeld-Higgs model. We explore the self-dual structure of the model and prove the existence of planar vortex solutions. Furthermore, we couple the system with the Einstein equations and study the cosmic strings problem over $\mathbb R^{1,1}\times S$, where $S$ is a Riemann surface. We prove the existence of cosmic string solutions when $S$ is noncompact. We also discuss the decay estimates for vortices and cosmic strings at infinity and show that the minimal energy is quantized and depends on the number of vortices and strings, respectively.