A TORSION-INDUCED COUPLING BETWEEN ELECTRIC AND MAGNETIC-FIELDS IN THE SOLAR CONVECTION ZONE

A striking formal analogy between sunspots and the type II superconductor magnetic vortex has been pointed out by Saniga (1990). On the basis of this similarity, it was shown that, by postulating the existence of a complex-valued scalar held on the Sun (a ''Higgs-like field''), many features of sunspots can be reproduced. Here this formal analogy is exploited further to show that the Abelian-Higgs sunspot acquires a non-zero electric charge in the background of a curved space-time endowed with a constant, completely antisymmetric torsion tensor. The space-time torsion is also shown to relate the spot's electric and magnetic fields.