Spontaneous breakdown of Lorentz symmetry in scalar QED with higher order derivatives

Scalar QED is studied with higher order derivatives for the scalar-field kinetic energy. A local potential is generated for the gauge field due to the covariant derivatives and the vacuum with nonvanishing expectation value for the scalar field, and the vector potential is constructed in the leading-order saddle-point expansion. This vacuum breaks the global gauge and Lorentz symmetry spontaneously. The unitarity of time evolution is assured in the physical, positive norm subspace, and the linearized equations of motion are calculated. The Goldstone theorem always keeps the radiation field massless. A particular model is constructed where the full set of standard Maxwell equations is recovered on the tree level, thereby relegating the effects of broken Lorentz symmetry to the level of radiative corrections.