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 ${\mathrm{A}}^{*}$ 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.

• Received 21 June 2010

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevD.82.065008