Dynamics and properties of chiral cosmic strings in Minkowski space

Abstract

Chiral cosmic strings are produced naturally at the end of inflation in supersymmetric models where the symmetry is broken via a D-term. Consequently in such theories, where both inflation and cosmic strings contribute to the density and CMBR (microwave background) perturbations, it is necessary to understand the evolution of chiral cosmic string networks. We study the dynamics of chiral cosmic strings in Minkowski space and comment on a number of differences with those of Nambu-Goto strings. To do this we follow the work of Carter and Peter who showed that the equations of motion for chiral cosmic strings reduce to a wave equation and two constraints, only one of which is different from the familiar Nambu-Goto constraints. We study chiral string loop solutions consisting of many harmonics and determine their self-intersection probabilities, and comment on the possible cosmological significance of these results.