Current discontinuities on superconducting cosmic strings

The propagation of current perturbations on superconducting cosmic strings is considered. The conditions for the existence of discontinuities similar to shock waves have been found. The formulas relating the string parameters and the discontinuity propagation speed are derived. The current growth law in a shock wave is deduced. The propagation speeds of shock waves with arbitrary amplitudes are calculated. The reason why there are no shock waves in the case of time-like currents (in the “electric” regime) is explained; this is attributable to the shock wave instability with respect to perturbations of the string world sheet.