Troubles with global monopoles in quantum gravity
- QMAP, Department of Physics, University of California, Davis, CA 95616, USA; OSTI
A theory with a global [Formula: see text] symmetry broken at a scale [Formula: see text] admits topological configurations: global monopoles realized by Goldstone fields winding around the core of false vacuum. One may expect them to behave as heavy, big composite objects, difficult to make and therefore mostly harmless. However, after gravity is turned on, as long as Equivalence Principle holds, one finds that global monopoles have a negative mass, [Formula: see text], where [Formula: see text] is the field theory coupling. This could catalyze an instability in the space of a global monopole, by the production of additional global monopole–antimonopole pairs along with normal particles, leading to energy production ab nihilo, if the pair energy is dominated by their negative rest masses. In a theory with unbroken local Poincaré symmetry, this could lead to a divergent ‘decay rate’ of the global monopole configurations.
- Research Organization:
- Univ. of California, Davis, CA (United States)
- Sponsoring Organization:
- USDOE Office of Science (SC)
- DOE Contract Number:
- SC0009999;
- OSTI ID:
- 1980832
- Journal Information:
- International Journal of Modern Physics D, Journal Name: International Journal of Modern Physics D Journal Issue: 05 Vol. 31; ISSN 0218-2718
- Publisher:
- World Scientific
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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