Perturbations from Strings Don't Look Like Strings

摘要

A systematic analysis is challenging popular ideas about perturbation from cosmicstrings. One way in which the picture has changed is reviewed. It is concluded that, while the scaling properties of cosmic strings figure significantly in the analysis, care must be taken when thinking in terms of single time snapshots. The process of seeding density perturbations is not fundamentally localized in time, and this fact can wash out many of the details which appear in a single snapshot.