Moving sources in a ghost condensate

TL;DR

This paper investigates the effects of moving sources in ghost condensate theories, showing that source motion suppresses observable deviations from Newtonian gravity and discussing stability and astrophysical implications.

Contribution

It provides a detailed analysis of how source motion affects gravitational corrections in ghost condensate models, highlighting the importance of stability constraints.

Findings

Standard Newton law is recovered for moving sources.

Corrections are negligible at astrophysical scales.

Vacuum instability imposes bounds on the symmetry breaking scale.

Abstract

Ghost condensation has been recently proposed as a mechanism inducing the spontaneous breaking of Lorentz symmetry. Corrections to the Newton potential generated by a static source have been computed: they yield a limit M < 10 MeV on the symmetry breaking scale, and - if the limit is saturated - they are maximal at a distance L ~ 1000 km from the source. However, these corrections propagate at a tiny velocity, v_s ~ 10^{-12} m/s, many orders of magnitude smaller than the velocity of any plausible source. We compute the gravitational potential taking the motion of the source into account: the standard Newton law is recovered in this case, with negligible corrections for any distance from the source up to astrophysical scales. Still, the vacuum of the theory is unstable, and requiring stability over the lifetime of the Universe gives a limit for M which is not too far from the one given above. In the absence of a direct coupling of the ghost to matter, signatures of this model will have to be searched in the form of exotic astrophysical events.