Vacuum structure and global strings with conical singularities

Vacuum structure and global cosmic strings are analyzed in the effective theory of self-interacting O(2) scalar fields on <f>(3+1)</f>-manifolds with conical singularities. In the context of one-loop effective action computed by heat-kernel methods with <f>ζ</f>-function regularization, we find an inhomogeneous vacuum of minimum energy and suggest some reason why low-energy global strings are likely to be generated at the conical singularities. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]