On a soliton-type spacetime defect

Abstract

We review the construction of a particular soliton-type solution of the classical Einstein and matter-field equations. This localized finite-energy static classical solution can be interpreted as a single spacetime defect embedded in Minkowski spacetime and may give rise to several new effects. For a Skyrme-type theory with small enough matter-field energy scale compared to the Planck energy scale and for a sufficiently small defect length scale, the existence of a globally regular solution requires a negative active gravitational mass, so that the defect repels a distant test particle ("antigravity"). There also exist "stealth defects" which have a vanishing asymptotic gravitational mass. These stealth defects are, however, not entirely invisible as they bring about a new type of gravitational lensing.