Topological invariants for superconducting cosmic strings

Abstract

Superconducting cosmic strings (SCSs) have received revived interests recently. In this paper we treat closed SCSs as oriented knotted line defects, and concentrate on their topology by studying the Hopf topological invariant. This invariant is an Abelian Chern–Simons action, from which the HOMFLYPT knot polynomial can be constructed. It is shown that the two independent parameters of the polynomial correspond to the writhe and twist contributions, separately. This new method is topologically stronger than the traditional (self-)linking number method, which fails to detect essential topology of knots sometimes, shedding new light upon the study of physical intercommunications of superconducting cosmic strings as a complex system.