MAGNETIC MONOPOLES AND SUPERCONDUCTING COSMIC STRINGS

This letter shows that a superconducting cosmic string is an extremely efficient producer of magnetic monopoles if the mass of the magnetic monopole is of the same order of magnitude as the symmetry breaking mass that generates the string. Given the absence of any observed monopoles, this calculation casts severe doubt on the existence of superconducting cosmic strings. If such strings do exist, a superconducting string may have en effective maximal current several orders of magnitude below the standard theoretically predicted limit.