Publication: Ghost of vector fields in compact stars
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Silva, Hector O.
Sotiriou, Thomas P.
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NO
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Abstract
Spontaneous scalarization is a mechanism that allows a scalar field to go undetected in weak gravity environments and yet develop a nontrivial configuration in strongly gravitating systems. At the perturbative level it manifests as a tachyonic instability around spacetimes that solve Einstein's equations. The endpoint of this instability is a nontrivial scalar field configuration that can significantly modify a compact object's structure and can produce observational signatures of the scalar field's presence. Does such a mechanism exists for vector fields? Here we revisit the model that constitutes the most straightforward generalization of the original scalarization model to a vector field and perform a perturbative analysis. We show that a ghost appears as soon as the square of the naive effective mass squared becomes negative anywhere. This result poses a serious obstacle in generalizing spontaneous scalarization to vector fields.
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Publisher
American Physical Society (APS)
Subject
Astronomy and astrophysics, Physics
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Source
Physical Review D
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DOI
10.1103/PhysRevD.105.024046