Self-intersections and gravitational properties of chiral cosmic strings in Minkowski space - art. no. 083517

Chiral cosmic strings are naturally produced at the end of D-term inflation and they may have interesting cosmological consequences. As was first prov ed by Carter and Peter, the equations of motion for chiral cosmic strings i n Minkowski space are integrable (just as for Nambu-Goto strings). Their so lutions are labeled by a function k(sigma -t) where t is time and sigma is the invariant length along the string, and the constraints on k, which dete rmines the charge an the string, are that 0 less than or equal tok(2)less t han or equal to1. We review the origin of this parameter and also discuss s ome general properties of such strings, which can be deduced from the equat ions of motion. The metric around infinite chiral strings is then construct ed in the weak-field limit, and studied as a function of k. We also conside r the angular momentum of circular chiral loops, and extend previous work t o consider the evolution and self-intersection properties of a more general family of chiral cosmic string loops for which k(2)(sigma -t) is not const ant.