Pith. sign in

REVIEW 12 cited by

Probing the gravitational wave background from cosmic strings with LISA

Not yet reviewed by Pith; the record is open.

This paper has not been read by Pith yet. Machine review is queued; the pith claim, tier, and objections will appear here once it completes.

SPECIMEN: schema-true, not a live event

T0 review · schema-true

One-sentence machine reading of the paper's core claim.

pith:XXXXXXXX · record.json · timestamp

arxiv 1909.00819 v1 pith:PE24OYUV submitted 2019-09-02 astro-ph.CO gr-qchep-ph

Probing the gravitational wave background from cosmic strings with LISA

classification astro-ph.CO gr-qchep-ph
keywords stringcosmiclisabackgroundnetworksgwbchangesconstraints
verification ladder T0 review T1 audit T2 compute T3 formal T4 reserved
0 comments
read the original abstract

Cosmic string networks offer one of the best prospects for detection of cosmological gravitational waves (GWs). The combined incoherent GW emission of a large number of string loops leads to a stochastic GW background (SGWB), which encodes the properties of the string network. In this paper we analyze the ability of the Laser Interferometer Space Antenna (LISA) to measure this background, considering leading models of the string networks. We find that LISA will be able to probe cosmic strings with tensions $G\mu \gtrsim \mathcal{O}(10^{-17})$, improving by about $6$ orders of magnitude current pulsar timing arrays (PTA) constraints, and potentially $3$ orders of magnitude with respect to expected constraints from next generation PTA observatories. We include in our analysis possible modifications of the SGWB spectrum due to different hypotheses regarding cosmic history and the underlying physics of the string network. These include possible modifications in the SGWB spectrum due to changes in the number of relativistic degrees of freedom in the early Universe, the presence of a non-standard equation of state before the onset of radiation domination, or changes to the network dynamics due to a string inter-commutation probability less than unity. In the event of a detection, LISA's frequency band is well-positioned to probe such cosmic events. Our results constitute a thorough exploration of the cosmic string science that will be accessible to LISA.

discussion (0)

Sign in with ORCID, Apple, or X to comment. Anyone can read and Pith papers without signing in.

Forward citations

Cited by 12 Pith papers

Reviewed papers in the Pith corpus that reference this work. Sorted by Pith novelty score.

  1. The decay rate of metastable cosmic strings beyond the thin-string approximation

    hep-ph 2026-06 unverdicted novelty 7.0

    Lattice simulations find the bounce action for metastable cosmic string decay suppressed compared to thin-string estimates, implying faster decay.

  2. New gravitational-wave templates for metastable cosmic strings: Loop breaking versus network collapse

    hep-ph 2026-04 unverdicted novelty 7.0

    Metastable cosmic strings produce a gravitational wave background that is best modeled with three parameters (string tension Gμ plus independent time scales t_LB and t_NC), yielding a compact analytical spectrum when ...

  3. Gravitational Wave-Induced Freeze-In of Fermionic Dark Matter

    hep-ph 2024-05 unverdicted novelty 7.0

    Stochastic gravitational waves induce 1-loop freeze-in production of fermionic dark matter via in-in formalism, potentially explaining the observed abundance more efficiently than conventional mechanisms.

  4. Probing Quadratically Coupled Ultralight Dark Matter with the Laser Interferometer Space Antenna

    hep-ph 2026-07 conditional novelty 6.0

    LISA forecasts for quadratically coupled ultralight dark matter show competitive or superior sensitivity to terrestrial and astrophysical probes in selected mass windows, free of screening.

  5. High-Power AM-CW Lunar Laser Ranging as a $\mu$Hz SGWB Detector

    gr-qc 2026-05 unverdicted novelty 6.0

    AM-CW lunar laser ranging achieves μHz SGWB sensitivity of 5.29×10^{-9} D_cov (80 μm range uncertainty) or 2.07×10^{-9} D_cov (50 μm) over 5 years, with discovery possible if covariance degradation stays below ~3.6-13.7.

  6. Multimodal axion emissions from Abelian-Higgs cosmic strings

    hep-ph 2025-10 unverdicted novelty 6.0

    Lattice simulations of Abelian-Higgs cosmic strings with axion-gauge coupling show multimodal axion production that can account for GeV-scale dark matter while predicting observable dark radiation.

  7. Polarization Formalism for Photon-Gravitational Wave Mixing Around Magnetars

    hep-ph 2026-06 unverdicted novelty 5.0

    Polarization formalism applied to Gertsenshtein mixing in magnetars yields bounds showing negligible stochastic GW background from magnetar EM emissions.

  8. Gravitational waves from cosmic strings with friction: analytical approximations and parameter space

    astro-ph.CO 2026-05 unverdicted novelty 5.0

    Analytical approximations for the ultra-high-frequency GW peak sourced by friction-era cosmic string loops, with expanded observable parameter space.

  9. High-Quality Axion Dark Matter at Gravitational Wave Interferometers

    hep-ph 2025-09 unverdicted novelty 5.0

    In gauged U(1) completions enabling high-quality axion dark matter, cosmic string loops generate a stochastic gravitational wave background with an infrared break frequency that exceeds foregrounds above 10^14 GeV bre...

  10. Gravitational Waves from hybrid defects as probe of Flavor symmetry breaking: Machine-Learning Approach

    astro-ph.CO 2026-05 unverdicted novelty 4.0

    Hybrid string-bounded domain wall networks from sequential U(1)_F and Z2 symmetry breaking generate a GW spectrum with a unique low-frequency slope that future detectors can observe and an MLP surrogate can characteri...

  11. Metastable strings at PTAs: classical stability analysis

    hep-ph 2026-05 unverdicted novelty 4.0

    Classical instabilities in metastable strings from two-step symmetry breaking can restrict the viable parameter space for explaining the PTA gravitational wave signal.

  12. Cosmic Strings as Dynamical Dark Energy: Novel Constraints

    astro-ph.CO 2025-05 conditional novelty 4.0

    Cosmic string networks are constrained to less than ~1% of the energy density using CMB+BAO+SN data, with some models preferring mildly negative densities but no Bayesian evidence favoring them over LambdaCDM.