Charged Particle Scattering from Electroweak and Semi-Local Strings

Abstract

The scattering of a charged fermion from an electroweak or semi-local string is investigated and a full solution obtained for both massive and massless cases. For the former, with fractional string flux, there is a helicity conserving and helicity-flip cross-section, of equal magnitude and of a modified Aharonov-Bohm form: for integer flux the strong interaction cross-section is suppressed by a logarithmic term. The results also apply for GUT cosmic strings and chiral fermions.

Comments: 18 pages, DAMTP 93-46