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A disintegrating cosmic string

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preprint
posted on 2005-08-25, 13:12 authored by Jerry Griffiths, Peter Docherty
We present a simple sandwich gravitational wave of the Robinson–Trautman family. This is interpreted as representing a shock wave with a spherical wavefront which propagates into a Minkowski background minus a wedge. (i.e. the background contains a cosmic string.) The deficit angle (the tension) of the string decreases through the gravitational wave, which then ceases. This leaves an expanding spherical region of Minkowski space behind it. The decay of the cosmic string over a finite interval of retarded time may be considered to generate the gravitational wave.

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  • Science

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  • Mathematical Sciences

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80516 bytes

Publication date

2002

Notes

This pre-print has been submitted, and accepted, to the journal, Classical and Quantum Gravity [© Institute of Physics]. The definitive version: GRIFFITHS, J.B. and DOCHERTY, P., 2002. A disintegrating cosmic string. Classical and Quantum Gravity, 19(11), pp. L109-L112, is available at: http://www.iop.org/EJ/journal/CQG.

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  • en

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