Collisions of Cosmic F- and D-strings

Recent work suggests that fundamental and Dirichlet strings, and their (p, q) bound states, may be observed as cosmic strings. The evolution of cosmic string networks, and therefore their observational signals, depends on what happens when two strings collide. We study this in string perturbation theory for collisions between all possible pairs of strings; different cases involve sphere, disk, and annulus amplitudes. The result also depends on the details of compactification; the dependence on ratios of scales is only logarithmic, but this is still numerically important. We study a range of models and parameters, and find that in most cases these strings can be distinguished from cosmic strings that arise as gauge theory solitons. Address after Sept. 1, 2004: Theoretical Astrophysics, Fermilab, Batavia, IL 60510 Address after Sept. 1, 2004: University of Amsterdam