Skewness in CMB temperature fluctuations from curved cosmic (super-)strings

Understand

We compute the one-point probability distribution function of small-angle cosmic microwave background temperature fluctuations due to curved cosmic (super-)strings with a simple model of string network by performing Monte Carlo simulations.

• Taking into account of the correlation between the curvature and the velocity of string segments, there appear non-Gaussian features, specifically non-Gaussian tails and a skewness, in the one-point pdf.
• The obtained sample skewness for the conventional field-theoretic cosmic strings is $g_1\approx -0.14$, which is consistent with the result reported by Fraisse et al..
• We also discuss the dependence of the pdf on the intercommuting probability.