How About Vortons ?

It has been suggested that cosmological dark matter may include a population of vortons (meaning small centrifugally stabilised cosmic string loops) as an outcome of (non-standard) electroweak symmetry breaking. The implications for this conjecture of recent theoretical progress on superconducting string theory are discussed, particularly in relation to problems of stability. It is tentatively concluded that if the underlying field theory provides a carrier field with mass not too far below that of the relevant Higgs mass (which may be a few hundred G.e.V.) electroweak string formation may conceivably produce enough vortons (with an extended mass distribution peaking perhaps at several hundred T.e.V.) to provide a marginally significant dark matter contribution.