Scaling property and peculiar velocity of global monopoles

Abstract

We investigate the scaling property of global monopoles in the expanding universe. By directly solving the equations of motion for scalar fields, we follow the time development of the number density of global monopoles in the radiation dominated (RD) universe and the matter dominated (MD) universe. It is confirmed that the global monopole network relaxes into the scaling regime and the number per hubble volume is a constant irrespective of the cosmic time. The number density $n(t)$ of global monopoles is given by $n(t)\simeq (0.43\pm 0.07)/t^3$ during the RD era and $n(t)\simeq (0.25\pm 0.05)/t^3$ during the MD era. We also examine the peculiar velocity $v$ of global monopoles. For this purpose, we establish a method to measure the peculiar velocity by use of only the local quantities of the scalar fields. It is found that $v\sim (1.0\pm 0.3)$ during the RD era and $v\sim (0.8\pm 0.3)$ during the MD era. By use of it, a more accurate analytic estimate for the number density of global monopoles is obtained.

Comments: 17 pages, 8 figures, to appear in Phys. Rev. D