Superconducting Cosmic Strings and Primordial Nucleosynthesis

We show that the presence of superconducting cosmic strings in the early Universe may have dramatic consequences for primordial nucleosynthesis. Due to the enormous currents that they potentially can carry, very large magnetic fields can be produced in the vicinity of such strings. As they then move through the primordial plasma, charged particles are deflected away by the magnetic pressure surrounding the strings. We show that the predicted primordial abundances can differ radically from standard big-bang predictions, and may even be consistent with an ${\Omega }_b=1\mathrm{}$ universe.