Cosmic Strings

Cosmic strings are a common (though not universal) prediction of grand unified theories, and may also arise from inflation in superstring theory.  If they exist, they will provide a window into fundamental physics at otherwise unreachable scales. Cosmic strings form a "network" of infinite strings and loops of all sizes.  To understand the possibility for observable signals, we determine the properties of this network by extrapolating from Large-scale numerical simulations and analyzing the emission of gravitational waves (which are both the most important signal and the most important energy-loss mechanism).