Higgs-induced spectroscopic shifts near strong gravity sources
- Dipartimento di Fisica 'Galileo Galilei', Universita di Padova, Via Marzolo 8, Padova 35131 (Italy) and ITAMP, Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, 60 Garden Street, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02138 (United States)
We explore the consequences of the mass generation due to the Higgs field in strong gravity astrophysical environments. The vacuum expectation value of the Higgs field is predicted to depend on the curvature of spacetime, potentially giving rise to peculiar spectroscopic shifts, named hereafter 'Higgs shifts'. Higgs shifts could be searched through dedicated multiwavelength and multispecies surveys with high spatial and spectral resolution near strong gravity sources such as Sagittarius A* or broad searches for signals due to primordial black holes. The possible absence of Higgs shifts in these surveys should provide limits to the coupling between the Higgs particle and the curvature of spacetime, a topic of interest for a recently proposed Higgs-driven inflationary model. We discuss some conceptual issues regarding the coexistence between the Higgs mechanism and gravity, especially for their different handling of fundamental and composite particles.
- OSTI ID:
- 21421191
- Journal Information:
- Physical Review. D, Particles Fields, Vol. 82, Issue 6; Other Information: DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevD.82.065008; (c) 2010 American Institute of Physics; ISSN 0556-2821
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
Similar Records
Curing singularities in cosmological evolution of F(R) gravity
Search for Higgs shifts in white dwarfs