Related papers: Anomalous continuous symmetries and quantum topolo…
We consider the possibility for phases of matter in which a continuous symmetry is spontaneously broken in a \emph{topologically non-trivial} way, which, roughly, means that the action for the Goldstone modes contains a quantized…
An emergent gapless Goldstone mode originates from continuous spontaneous symmetry breaking, which has become a doctrine since the pioneering work by Goldstone [J. Goldstone, Nuovo Cimento \textbf{19}, 154 (1961)]. However, we argue that it…
Symmetries in Quantum Field Theory may have 't Hooft anomalies. If the symmetry is unbroken in the vacuum, the anomaly implies a nontrivial low-energy limit, such as gapless modes or a topological field theory. If the symmetry is…
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…
Symmetry protected topological (SPT) states have boundary 't Hooft anomalies that obstruct an effective boundary theory realized in its own dimension with UV completion and an on-site $G$-symmetry. In this work, yet we show that a certain…
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…
Topological spin liquids can be described by topological gauge theories with global symmetry. Due to the presence of both nontrivial bulk deconfined gauge fluxes and global symmetry, topological spin liquids are examples of the so-called…
We explore the physics of relativistic gapless phases defined by a mixed anomaly between two generalized conserved currents. The gapless modes can be understood as Goldstone modes arising from the nonlinear realization of (generically…
Goldstone's theorem states that there is a massless mode for each broken symmetry generator. It has been known for a long time that the naive generalization of this counting fails to give the correct number of massless modes for…
We discuss the well-known phenomenon of spontaneous symmetry breaking for a linear sigma model for scalar and pseudoscalar mesons based on the meson composite structure and the normalization of the quantum states. To test our formulation…
The Goldstone theorem implies the appearance of an ungapped mode whenever a continuous global symmetry is spontaneously broken. In general it does not say anything about the precise form of the dispersion relation nor does it imply that…
Anomalous tunneling refers to the phenomenon in which the transmission coefficient through a potential barrier approaches unity as the energy of an incident particle or quasiparticle tends to zero. This counterintuitive effect has been…
We discuss spontaneous symmetry breaking of open classical and quantum systems. When a continuous symmetry is spontaneously broken in an open system, a gapless excitation mode appears corresponding to the Nambu-Goldstone mode. Unlike…
In addition to possessing fractional statistics, anyon excitations of a 2D topologically ordered state can realize symmetry in distinct ways , leading to a variety of symmetry enriched topological (SET) phases. While the symmetry…
In this work we present some new understanding of topological order, including three main aspects: (1) It was believed that classifying topological orders corresponds to classifying gapped quantum states. We show that such a statement is…
We argue that in an inflationary cosmology a consequence of the lack of time translational invariance is that spontaneous breaking of a continuous symmetry and Goldstone's theorem \emph{do not} imply the existence of \emph{massless}…
Depending on the coupling to the environment, symmetries of open quantum systems manifest in two distinct forms, the strong and the weak. We study the spontaneous symmetry breaking among phases with strong symmetry, weak symmetry, and no…
We analyze the mechanism of spontaneous symmetry breaking of scale invariance in Galilean invariant field theories. We show that the existence of a dynamic gapless dilaton mode depends on whether the $U(1)$ particle number or the Galilean…
The hallmark of symmetry-protected topological (SPT) phases is the existence of anomalous boundary states, which can only be realized with the corresponding bulk system. In this work, we show that for every Hermitian anomalous boundary mode…
The spontaneous breaking of boost invariance is ubiquitous in nature, yet the associated Goldstone bosons are nowhere to be seen. We discuss why some subtleties are to be expected in the Goldstone phenomenon for spontaneously broken boosts,…