Paper detail

Scalar Lumps with Two Horizons

We study generalisations of the Schwarzschild-de Sitter solution in the presence of a scalar field with a potential barrier. These static, spherically symmetric solutions have two horizons, in between which the scalar interpolates at least once across the potential barrier, thus developing a lump. In part, we recover solutions discussed earlier in the literature and for those we clarify their properties. But we also find a new class of solutions in which the scalar lump curves the spacetime sufficiently strongly so as to change the nature of the erstwhile cosmological horizon into an additional trapped horizon, resulting in a scalar lump surrounded by two black holes. These new solutions appear in a wide range of the parameter space of the potential. We also discuss (challenges for) the application of all of these solutions to black hole seeded vacuum decay.