Charged Cosmic String Nucleation in de Sitter Space

Abstract

We investigate the quantum nucleation of pairs of charged circular cosmic strings in de Sitter space. By including self-gravity we obtain the classical potential energy barrier and compute the quantum mechanical tunneling probability in the semiclassical approximation. We also discuss the classical evolution of charged circular strings after their nucleation.Comment: 12 pages Latex + 3 figures (not included), Nordita 94/38