Gravitational Higgs mechanism and resulting observational effects

Krall, Verena; Coates, Andrew; Kokkotas, Kostas D.

doi:10.1103/physrevd.102.124065

Cited by 3 publications

(2 citation statements)

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“…Spontaneous vectorization theories with restored gauge symmetry were also conceived using the Higgs mechanism rather than the Stueckelberg mechanism [80], inspired by the gravitational Higgs mechanism [81][82][83]. However, this theory [80] also has divergent terms in its field equations akin to Eq.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Ghost of vector fields in compact stars

et al. 2022

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Spontaneous scalarization is a mechanism that allows a scalar field to go undetected in weak gravity environments and yet develop a nontrivial configuration in strongly gravitating systems. At the perturbative level it manifests as a tachyonic instability around spacetimes that solve Einstein's equations. The endpoint of this instability is a nontrivial scalar field configuration that can significantly modify a compact object's structure and can produce observational signatures of the scalar field's presence. Does such a mechanism exists for vector fields? Here we revisit the model that constitutes the most straightforward generalization of the original scalarization model to a vector field and perform a perturbative analysis. We show that a ghost appears as soon as the square of the naive effective mass squared becomes negative anywhere. This result poses a serious obstacle in generalizing spontaneous scalarization to vector fields.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Ghost of vector fields in compact stars

et al. 2022

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show abstract

“…Spontaneous vectorization theories with restored gauge symmetry were also conceived using the Higgs mechanism rather than the Stueckelberg mechanism [79], inspired by the gravitational Higgs mechanism [80][81][82]. However, this theory [79] also has divergent terms in its field equations akin to Eq.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The ghost of vector fields in compact stars

Silva,

Coates,

Ramazanoğlu

et al. 2021

Preprint

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Spontaneous scalarization is a mechanism that allows a scalar field to go undetected in weak gravity environments and yet develop a nontrivial configuration in strongly gravitating systems. At the perturbative level it manifests as a tachyonic instability around spacetimes that solve Einstein's equations. The end-point of this instability is a nontrivial scalar field configuration that can significantly modify a compact object's structure and can produce observational signatures of the scalar field's presence. Does such a mechanism exists for vector fields? Here we revisit the model that constitutes the most straightforward generalization of the original scalarization model to a vector field and perform a perturbative analysis. We show that a ghost appears as soon as the square of the naive effective mass squared becomes negative anywhere. This result poses a serious obstacle in generalizing spontaneous scalarization to vector fields.

show abstract