Gravitational Higgs Mechanism in Neutron Star Interiors

Abstract

We suggest that nonminimally coupled scalar fields can lead to modifications of the microphysics in the interiors of relativistic stars. As a concrete example, we consider the generation of a non-zero photon mass in such high-density environments. This is achieved by means of a light gravitational scalar, and the scalarization phase transition in scalar-tensor theories of gravitation. Two distinct models are presented, and phenomenological implications are briefly discussed.

5 pages

References in corpus (2)

• The relativistic pulsar-white dwarf binary PSR J1738+0333 II. The most stringent test of scalar-tensor gravity
• Astronomical and laboratory searches for space-time variation of fundamental constants

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• Spontaneous growth of gauge fields in gravity through the Higgs mechanism
• Constructing Neutron Stars with a Gravitational Higgs Mechanism
• The gravitational Higgs mechanism and resulting smoking gun effects
• Gravitational Higgs mechanism in inspiraling scalarized NS-WD binary
• The ghost of vector fields in compact stars