Cosmic strings arising in a self-dual Abelian Higgs model

Abstract

In this note we construct self-dual cosmic strings from an Abelian Higgs model in two-dimension with a polynomial formation of the potential energy density. By integrating the Einstein equations, we obtain an equivalent form to the sources, which is a nonlinear elliptic equation with singularities and complicated exponential terms. We prove the existence of a solution governing strings in the broken symmetry category on the whole plane, and the multiple string solutions are valid under a sufficient condition imposed only on the total number of strings. The technique of upper–lower solutions and the method of regularization are employed to show the existence of a solution when there are at least two distant string centers. When all the string centers are identical, a fixed-point theorem is used to study the properties of the nonlinear elliptic equation. Finally, we establish the sharp asymptotic estimate for the solutions at infinity and derive the dependence of the total gravitational curvature on the string number.