Speaker
Description
Cosmic strings are topological defects that arise in particle physics models with a spontaneously broken U(1) symmetry, motivated, for example, by the Peccei-Quinn mechanism. Global strings are predicted to radiate massless dark matter axions, massive particles and gravitational waves. If we are to detect these strings via gravitational waves, or to detect axion dark matter in the cosmological post-inflationary symmetry breaking scenario, understanding the magnitude and spectrum of the radiation from strings will be crucial. In this talk, I will detail my work on the analytic modelling of axion string radiation using adaptive mesh refinement simulations and its dependence on parameters such as the string amplitude and the radius of curvature. I will conclude by discussing the applications of these results for axion dark matter and cosmic string gravitational wave predictions.
