Improved calculation of the gravitational wave spectrum from kinks on infinite cosmic strings

Understand

Gravitational wave observations provide unique opportunities to search for cosmic strings.

• One of the strongest sources of gravitational waves is discontinuities of cosmic strings, called kinks, which are generated at points of intersection.
• Kinks on infinite strings are known to generate a gravitational wave background over a wide range of frequencies.
• In this paper, we calculate the spectrum of the gravitational wave background by numerically solving the evolution equation for the distribution function of the kink sharpness.