In defense of local textures (and other Higgs gradients)

TL;DR

This paper argues that GUT-scale textures could explain the CMB cold spot and that electroweak Higgs gradients may persist indefinitely, challenging previous assumptions about their relaxation.

Contribution

It provides a theoretical demonstration that gauged configurations relax quickly only under certain conditions, and that global symmetries with commuting generators can lead to indefinite evolution of Higgs gradients.

Findings

GUT textures can explain the CMB cold spot.

Electroweak Higgs gradients may evolve indefinitely.

Gauged configurations relax quickly only with non-commuting generators.

Abstract

Cruz et al. recently showed that the CMB cold spot can be explained by a GUT-scale texture. But following Turok's argument that gauged configurations always relax quickly, they posit a global symmetry, without obvious relation to GUTs. An observation by Nambu invalidates Turok's argument when the broken symmetry group has commuting generators. This is demonstrated explicitly in the standard model of electroweak interactions and holds generally for intermediate SSB stages in GUTs. The cold spot could therefore be due to a GUT texture, and electroweak Higgs gradients may evolve indefinitely.