Gravitational wave stochastic background from cosmic (super)strings

Abstract

We consider the stochastic background of gravitational waves produced by a network of cosmic strings and assess their accessibility to current and planned gravitational wave detectors, as well as to big bang nucleosynthesis (BBN), cosmic microwave background (CMB), and pulsar timing constraints. We find that current data from interferometric gravitational wave detectors, such as LIGO, are sensitive to areas of parameter space of cosmic string models complementary to those accessible to pulsar, BBN, and CMB bounds. Future more sensitive LIGO runs and interferometers such as Advanced LIGO and LISA will be able to explore substantial parts of the parameter space.