Relativistic Nontopological Soliton Stars in a U(1) Gauge Higgs Model

TL;DR

This paper investigates relativistic nontopological soliton stars within a U(1) gauge Higgs model, revealing their mass limits, dependence on symmetry breaking scale, and potential astrophysical relevance through numerical analysis.

Contribution

It provides the first detailed numerical study of NTS stars in a coupled gauge-Higgs-gravity system, uncovering new properties and mass scaling behaviors.

Findings

Maximum mass depends on symmetry breaking scale

Stars can be relativistically compact with stable orbits

Mass increases steeply as breaking scale decreases

Abstract

We study spherically symmetric nontopological soliton stars (NTS stars) numerically in the coupled system of a complex scalar field, a U(1) gauge field, a complex Higgs scalar field, and Einstein gravity, where the symmetry is broken spontaneously. The gravitational mass of NTS stars is limited by a maximum mass for a fixed breaking scale, and the maximum mass increases steeply as the breaking scale decreases. In the case of the breaking scale is much less than the Planck scale, the maximum mass of NTS stars becomes the astrophysical scale, and such a star is relativistically compact so that it has the innermost stable circular orbit. The first author contributed with a part of numerical calculations. The second did with planning and conducting the research, and the third did with all numerical calculations and finding new properties of the system.