UHE neutrinos from superconducting cosmic strings

Understand

Superconducting cosmic strings naturally emit highly boosted charge carriers from cusps.

• This occurs when a cosmic string or a loop moves through a magnetic field and develops an electric current.
• The charge carriers and the products of their decay, including protons, photons and neutrinos, are emitted as a narrow jets with opening angle $\theta \sim 1/\gamma_c$, where $\gamma_c$ is the Lorentz factor of the cusp.
• The excitation of electric currents in strings occurs mostly in clusters of galaxies, which are characterized by magnetic fields $B \sim 10^{-6}$ G and a filling factor $f_B \sim 10^{-3}$.