Related papers: Impossible Symmetries and Conformal Gravity
Linearised gravity has a global symmetry under which the graviton is shifted by a symmetric tensor satisfying a certain flatness condition. There is also a dual symmetry that can be associated with a global shift symmetry of the dual…
We discuss generalized global symmetries and their breaking. We extend Goldstone's theorem to higher form symmetries by showing that a perimeter law for an extended $p$-dimensional defect operator charged under a continuous $p$-form…
The two-phase structure is imposed on the world continuum, with the graviton emerging as the tensor Goldstone boson during the spontaneous transition from the affinely connected phase to the metric one. The physics principle of…
We adapt the Goldstone theorem to study spontaneous symmetry breaking in relativistic theo- ries at finite charge density. It is customary to treat systems at finite density via non-relativistic Hamiltonians. Here we highlight the…
We consider systems in which a continuous symmetry $G$, which may be anomalous, is spontaneously broken to an anomaly-free subgroup $H$ such that the effective action for the Goldstone modes contains topologically non-trivial terms. If the…
The nonlinear affine Goldstone model of the emergent gravity, built on the nonlinearly realized/hidden affine symmetry, is concisely revisited. Beyond General Relativity, the explicit violation of general invariance/relativity, under…
The characteristic feature of the spontaneous symmetry breaking is the presence of the Goldstone mode(s). For the conformal symmetry broken spontaneously the corresponding Goldstone boson is the dilaton. Coupling an arbitrary system to the…
Four-dimensional asymptotically flat spacetimes have been central to recent developments in infrared physics. Gravitational waves reaching the asymptotic boundary reveal an infinite-dimensional symmetry group known as the…
Space-time symmetries are a crucial ingredient of any theoretical model in physics. Unlike internal symmetries, which may or may not be gauged and/or spontaneously broken, space-time symmetries do not admit any ambiguity: they are gauged by…
In a recent paper [1], it was introduced a new class of gravitational theories with two local degrees of freedom. The existence of these theories apparently challenges the distinctive role of general relativity as the unique non-linear…
We consider some aspects of spontaneous breaking of Lorentz Invariance in field theories, discussing the possibility that the certain tensor operators may condensate in the ground state in which case the tensor Goldstone particles would…
Fractonic phases are new phases of matter that host excitations with restricted mobility. We show that a certain class of gapless fractonic phases are realized as a result of spontaneous breaking of continuous higher-form symmetries whose…
We study effective field theories (EFTs) enjoying (maximal) biform symmetries. These are defined by the presence of a conserved (electric) current that has the symmetries of a Young tableau with two columns of equal length. When these…
An infinite number of physically nontrivial symmetries are found for abelian gauge theories with massless charged particles. They are generated by large $U(1)$ gauge transformations that asymptotically approach an arbitrary function…
We investigate a class of theories involving a symmetric two-tensor field in Minkowski spacetime with a potential triggering spontaneous violation of Lorentz symmetry. The resulting massless Nambu-Goldstone modes are shown to obey the…
We construct a non-linear electrodynamics arising from the spontaneous Lorentz symmetry breaking triggered by a non-zero vacuum expectation value of the electromagnetic field strength, instead of the electromagnetic potential. The expansion…
The "parity" anomaly -- more accurately described as an anomaly in time-reversal or reflection symmetry -- arises in certain theories of fermions coupled to gauge fields and/or gravity in a spacetime of odd dimension. This anomaly has…
We study the problem of how to derive conformal symmetry in the framework of quantum gravity. We start with a generic gravitational theory which is invariant under both the general coordinate transformation (GCT) and Weyl transformation (or…
We provide a unified treatment of conformally soft Goldstone modes which arise when spin-one or spin-two conformal primary wavefunctions become pure gauge for certain integer values of the conformal dimension $\Delta$. This effort lands us…
It has long been known that photons and gravitons may appear as vector and tensor Goldstone modes caused \ by spontaneous Lorentz invariance violation (SLIV). Usually this approach is considered for photons and gravitons separately. We…