Published January 1, 2018 | Version v1
Journal article Open

Spontaneous growth of gauge fields in gravity through the Higgs mechanism

  • 1. Koc Univ, Dept Phys, TR-34450 Istanbul, Turkey

Description

We introduce gravity theories featuring spontaneously growing gauge fields where the growth is due to the Higgs mechanism. The underlying physics is inspired by the spontaneous scalarization phenomena in scalar-tensor theories. The tachyonic instability that causes the growth in spontaneous scalarization and its analog for vector fields is introduced not as an explicit potential term, but through a scalar coupling using a Higgs field. The resulting theories are distinct from previous examples of spontaneous tensorization in that they respect the gauge symmetry at the level of the action. Our results are valid for both Abelian and non-Abelian gauge theories, and this is the first study of the spontaneous growth of the latter. We discuss astrophysical implications of these theories and argue their relevance, especially in the strong gravity regime.

Files

bib-6ba3ea7d-0b52-4ac7-8941-b3be6d6a8d37.txt

Files (124 Bytes)

Name Size Download all
md5:bdd6de7011687daabd3f8e9367d031c5
124 Bytes Preview Download