Cusps on cosmic superstrings with junctions

Abstract

The existence of cusps on non-periodic strings ending on D-branes is demonstrated and the conditions, for which such cusps are generic, are derived. The dynamics of F-, D-string and FD-string junctions are investigated. It is shown that pairs of FD-string junctions, such as would form after intercommutations of F- and D-strings, generically contain cusps. This new feature of cosmic superstrings opens up the possibility of extra channels of energy loss from a string network. The phenomenology of cusps on such cosmic superstring networks is compared to that of cusps formed on networks of their field theory analogues, the standard cosmic strings.

22 pages, 5 figures