Abstract
Superconducting cosmic strings emit electromagnetic waves between the times of recombination and reionization. Hence, they have an effect on the global 21cm signal. We compute the resulting absorption features, focusing on strings with critical current, study their dependence on the string tension μ, and compare with observational results. For string tensions in the range of Gμ = 10-10, where G is Newton's gravitational constant, there is an interesting amplification of the two characteristic absorption features, one during the cosmic dawn, z ≲ 30, and the other during the cosmic dark age, z ∼ 80, the former being comparable in amplitude to what was observed by the EDGES experiment.