Cosmic Strings and Their Induced Non-Gaussianities in the Cosmic Microwave Background

Figure 13

String-induced CMB temperature fluctuations on a field of view [46]. Because of their cosmological scaling, most of the long strings intercept our past light cone close to the last scattering surface. As can be seen in the right image, the edges in the temperature patterns can be identified to strings intercepting our past light cone. Note that active regions corresponding to string intersection and loop formation events lead to the bright spots in these maps.

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