Strong gravity of a self-similar global texture

Abstract

We find the metric and scalar field of a self-similar global texture. In the weak-field limit we recover the earlier results of Turok and Spergel and of Notzold. We discuss some of the properties of the full metric and give expressions for the null radial geodesics. An interesting result is that the metric is asymptotically static and conical with a deficit solid angle of $64{\ensuremath{\pi}}^{2}G{\ensuremath{\eta}}^{2}$ where $\ensuremath{\eta}$ is the scale of symmetry breaking.