Vacuum Interaction of Topological Strings at Short Distances

The paper provides an extended overview of recent results obtained by the authors in the process of studying the vacuum interaction of topological cosmic strings at short distances, taking into account their transverse size a and the mass m of the quantized field. We consider the case of a massive real-valued scalar field with minimal coupling. It is shown that at the interstring distances significantly larger than the Compton length, lc=1/m, the Casimir effect is damped exponentially. On the other hand, at distances smaller than lc but much larger than the typical string width, the field-mass influence becomes insignificant. In this case, the partial contribution of a massive field to the Casimir energy is of the same order as the contribution of a massless one. At these distances, the string's transverse size is insignificant also. However, at the interstring distances of the same order as a string radius, the energy of the vacuum interaction of thick strings may significantly surpass the one for two infinitely thin strings with the same mass per unit length.