Spontaneous growth of gauge fields in gravity through the Higgs mechanism

TL;DR

This paper presents a new class of gravity theories where gauge fields spontaneously grow via the Higgs mechanism, respecting gauge symmetry and applicable to both Abelian and non-Abelian fields, with potential astrophysical implications.

Contribution

It introduces a novel framework for spontaneous gauge field growth in gravity through the Higgs mechanism, extending previous scalarization concepts to gauge fields while maintaining gauge symmetry.

Findings

Applicable to both Abelian and non-Abelian gauge theories

First study of spontaneous growth in non-Abelian gauge fields

Discusses potential astrophysical implications in strong gravity regimes

Abstract

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.