Proca Q-balls and Q-shells

Abstract

Non-topological solitons such as Q-balls and Q-shells have been studied for scalar fields invariant under global and gauged U(1) symmetries. We generalize this framework to include a Proca mass for the gauge boson, which can arise either from spontaneous symmetry breaking or via the Stückelberg mechanism. A heavy (light) gauge boson leads to solitons reminiscent of the global (gauged) case, but for intermediate values these Proca solitons exhibit completely novel features such as disconnected regions of viable parameter space and Q-shells with unbounded radius. We provide numerical solutions and excellent analytic approximations for both Proca Q-balls and Q-shells. These allow us to not only demonstrate the novel features numerically, but also understand and predict their origin analytically.

arXiv comment21 pages, 5 figures; matches published version

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Cited by in corpus (4)

• Excited Q-Balls
• Q-balls in polynomial potentials
• Dynamical evolution of $U(1)$ gauged Q-balls in axisymmetry
• Generating Non-topological Solitons Via Thermal Corrections: Higgs Balls