Higgs-induced spectroscopic shifts near strong gravity sources

TL;DR

This paper investigates how the Higgs field's interaction with strong gravitational fields could cause observable spectroscopic shifts, offering a novel way to test Higgs-curvature coupling in astrophysical environments.

Contribution

It introduces the concept of Higgs-induced spectroscopic shifts near strong gravity sources and proposes observational strategies to detect or constrain Higgs-curvature coupling.

Findings

Higgs shifts could be detectable near black holes and primordial black holes.

Absence of Higgs shifts in observations can set limits on Higgs-curvature coupling.

The study discusses conceptual issues of Higgs mechanism coexistence with gravity.

Abstract

We explore the consequences of the mass generation due to the Higgs field in strong gravity astrophysical environments. The vacuum expectation value of the Higgs field is predicted to depend on the curvature of spacetime, potentially giving rise to peculiar spectroscopic shifts, named hereafter "Higgs shifts." Higgs shifts could be searched through dedicated multiwavelength and multispecies surveys with high spatial and spectral resolution near strong gravity sources such as Sagittarius A* or broad searches for signals due to primordial black holes. The possible absence of Higgs shifts in these surveys should provide limits to the coupling between the Higgs particle and the curvature of spacetime, a topic of interest for a recently proposed Higgs-driven inflationary model. We discuss some conceptual issues regarding the coexistence between the Higgs mechanism and gravity, especially for their different handling of fundamental and composite particles.