Measuring Global Monopole Velocities, one by one

Understand

We present an estimation of the average velocity of a network of global monopoles in a cosmological setting using large numerical simulations.

• In order to obtain the value of the velocity, we improve some already known methods, and present a new one.
• This new method estimates individual global monopole velocities in a network, by means of detecting each monopole position in the lattice and following the path described by each one of them.
• Using our new estimate we can settle an open question previously posed in the literature: velocity-dependent one-scale (VOS) models for global monopoles predict two branches of scaling solutions, one with monopoles moving at subluminal speeds and one with monopoles moving at luminal speeds.