Cosmic Rays and Spectral Distortions from Collapsing Textures

Understand

We compute the energy spectrum of photons and neutrinos produced by the unwinding of a scaling distribution of cosmic textures, and discuss the implications for the spectrum of high energy cosmic rays, and for CMB spectral distortions.

• Textures lead to a contribution to the photon flux which scales as $E^3 F(E) \sim E^{3/2}$.
• Hence, the tightest constraints on the texture model come from the highest energies from which primordial photons can reach us without being scattered by the CMB and other foregrounds.
• Textures lead to both $\mu$ type and $y$ type distortions.