PROJECTED CONSTRAINTS ON THE COSMIC (SUPER)STRING TENSION WITH FUTURE GRAVITATIONAL WAVE DETECTION EXPERIMENTS

We present projected constraints on the cosmic string tension, G mu /c super(2), that could be achieved by future gravitational wave detection experiments and express our results as semi-analytic relations of the form G mu ([Omega] sub(gw)h super(2))/c super(2 ), to allow for direct computation of the tension constraints for future experiments. These results can be applied to new constraints on [Omega] sub(gw)h super(2) as they are imposed. Experiments operating in different frequency bands probe different parts of the gravitational wave spectrum of a cosmic string network and are sensitive to different uncertainties in the underlying cosmic string model parameters. We compute the gravitational wave spectra of cosmic string networks based on the one-scale model, covering all the parameter space accessed by each experiment that is strongly dependent on the birth scale of loops relative to the horizon, alpha . The upper limits on the string tension avoid any assumptions on the model parameters. We perform this investigation for Pulsar Timing Array experiments of different durations, as well as ground-based and space-borne interferometric detectors.