Particlelike solutions of modified gravity: the Higgs monopoles

TL;DR

This paper explores Higgs monopoles, particlelike solutions in modified gravity models with nonminimal coupling, revealing how they depend on parameters like coupling strength and compactness, with implications for cosmology and compact objects.

Contribution

It introduces Higgs monopoles as novel solutions in Higgs inflation models, analyzing their properties and parameter dependencies in gravitational contexts.

Findings

Higgs monopoles exist around compact objects with specific parameter ranges.

Large nonminimal coupling can lead to arbitrarily large Higgs field amplitudes.

Higgs monopoles connect cosmological inflation with compact object physics.

Abstract

The lore paradigm for solving so-called horizon and flatness problems in cosmology is the primordial inflation. Plethora of inflationary models have been built in last decades and first experimental probes seem to appear in favor of the inflationary paradigm. We will focus here on one of them, the Higgs inflation, and show the combined constraint required for such a model at cosmological as well as gravitational scales, i.e. for compact objects. We will show that Higgs inflation model gives rise to particlelike solutions around compact objects, dubbed Higgs monopoles, characterized by the nonminimal coupling parameter as well as the mass and the compactness of the object. For large values of the nonminimal coupling constant and specific compactness, the amplitude of the Higgs field inside the matter distribution can be arbitrarily large.