Probing Cosmic Strings with Gravitational-Wave Fringe

Understand

Cosmic strings are important remnants of early-Universe phase transitions.

• We show that they can be probed by Gravitational Waves (GWs) from compact binary mergers.
• If such chirping GW passes by a cosmic string, it is gravitationally lensed and left with a characteristic signal of the lensing -- the GW fringe.
• It is observable naturally through the frequency chirping of GWs.