Vacuum polarization in gravitational and electromagnetic fields around a superconducting string

We have calculated the polarization current induced in the physical vacuum around a superconducting cosmic string taking into account the gravitational field of the string. The current can be calculated as an expansion in powers of the inverse of the electron mass. In the region far from the string, where it is justified to keep only the lowest term of this expansion, the polarization current turns out to screen the original current in the string, but the effect is very weak. A direct calculation of terms due to the presence of the gravitational field shows that they are dominated, for realistic string parameters, by the purely electromagnetic contribution