Searching for Signatures of Cosmic Superstrings in the CMB

Understand

Because cosmic superstrings generically form junctions and gauge theoretic strings typically do not, junctions may provide a signature to distinguish between cosmic superstrings and gauge theoretic cosmic strings.

• In cosmic microwave background anisotropy maps, cosmic strings lead to distinctive line discontinuities.
• String junctions lead to junctions in these line discontinuities.
• In turn, edge detection algorithms such as the Canny algorithm can be used to search for signatures of strings in anisotropy maps.