Physics Commons^™

Energy Extraction From Black Holes By Cosmic Strings, Michael Ramsey

Discovery Day

Cosmic strings, speculative one-dimensional objects, are thought to result from spontaneous, electroweak symmetry-breaking phase transitions in the early universe. If cosmic strings exist, they could extract energy from spinning black holes via the Penrose process. Although theoretically motivated, cosmic strings have not yet been observed. We propose an indirect method of observing a cosmic string by investigating a pulsar-black hole binary system, using high precision observations of pulsars. We then aim to place bounds on cosmic string abundance and tension.