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Abstract

The Evaporating ACO Cosmic String Loop

The ACO loop is a solution of the equations of motion for a zero-thickness cosmic string in a Minkowski background that was first discovered by Allen, Casper and Ottewill in 1994. It is rigidly rotating, and has the lowest radiative efficiency – and hence the longest lifetime – of any known flat-space loop solution. In a recent series of papers I have shown that, at the level of the weak-field approximation, the ACO loop evaporates in a self-similar manner, radiating away all its energy and angular momentum in a finite time and leaving behind a remnant Minkowski spacetime. In this talk I will review all that is known about the dynamics and gravitational features of the evaporating ACO loop, and briefly discuss the prospects for an exact non-linear solution.

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