Ken Olum

Tufts University, November 3, 12:00 pm

Cosmic strings and their gravitational waves

Our universe may contain a network of cosmic strings arising from inflation or a phase transition early in the universe. Cosmic string loops would produce a gravitational wave background that might be detected by pulsar timing arrays or interferometers. I will describe how we determine cosmic string network properties and the resulting gravitational wave background for comparison with observation.