Related papers: Formation of Topological Defects
When a second-order phase transition is crossed at fine rate, the evolution of the system stops being adiabatic as a result of the critical slowing down in the neighborhood of the critical point. In systems with a topologically nontrivial…
Growing experimental evidence indicates that topological defects could serve as organizing centers in the morphogenesis of tissues. Here, we provide a quantitative explanation for this phenomenon, rooted in the buckling theory of deformable…
We develop methods to probe the excitation spectrum of topological phases of matter in two spatial dimensions. Applying these to the Fibonacci string nets perturbed away from exact solvability, we analyze a topological phase transition…
The dynamics of phase transitions plays a crucial r\^ole in the so-called interface between high energy particle physics and cosmology. Many of the interesting results generated during the last fifteen years or so rely on simplified…
During the past two decades, cosmologists turned to particle physics in order to explore the physics of the very early Universe. The main link between the physics of the smallest and largest structures in the Universe is the idea of…
Perturbative estimates suggest that extended topological defects such as cosmic strings emit few particles, but numerical simulations of the fields from which they are constructed suggest the opposite. In this paper we study the decay of…
Topological defects (such as monopoles, vortex lines, or domain walls) mark locations where disparate choices of a broken symmetry vacuum elsewhere in the system lead to irreconcilable differences. They are energetically costly (the energy…
Lars Onsager and Richard Feynman envisioned that the three-dimensional (3D) superfluid-to-normal $\lambda$ transition in $^{4}$He occurs through the proliferation of vortices. This process should hold for every phase transition in the same…
Motivated by the goal to give the simplest possible microscopic foundation for a broad class of topological phases, we study quantum mechanical lattice models where the topology of the lattice is one of the dynamical variables. However, a…
Disclinations, first observed in mesomorphic phases, are relevant to a number of ill-ordered condensed matter media, with continuous symmetries or frustrated order. They also appear in polycrystals at the edges of grain boundaries. They are…
Nonequilibrium states of quantum materials can exhibit exotic properties and enable unprecedented functionality and applications. These transient states are inherently inhomogeneous, characterized by the formation of topologically protected…
The study of continuous phase transitions triggered by spontaneous symmetry breaking has brought new concepts that revolutionized the way we understand many-body systems. Recently, through the discovery of symmetry protected topological…
We study defects in symmetry breaking phases, such as domain walls, vortices, and hedgehogs. In particular, we focus on the localized gapless excitations which sometimes occur at the cores of these objects. These are topologically protected…
Liquid crystals generally support orientational singularities of the director field known as topological defects. These latter modifiy transport properties in their vicinity as if the geometry was non-Euclidean. We present a state of the…
The spherical symmetry Black holes are considered in expanding background. The singularity line and the marginally trapped tube surface behavior are discussed. In particular, we address the conditions of whether a dynamical horizon forms…
Ordered phases on curved substrates experience a complex interplay of ordering and intrinsic curvature, commonly producing frustration and singularities. This is an especially important issue in crystals as ever-smaller scale materials are…
This survey article reviews recent results on fermion system in discrete space-time and corresponding systems in Minkowski space. After a basic introduction to the discrete setting, we explain a mechanism of spontaneous symmetry breaking…
In this lecture at a school for condensed matter physicists, I begin with basic concepts and tools for investigating phase transitions in quantum field theory. The very different roles of global and gauge symmetries in phase transitions…
The gravitational field of monopoles, cosmic strings and domain walls is studied in the quadratic gravitational theory $R+\alpha R^2$ with $\alpha |R|\ll 1$, and is compared with the result in Einstein's theory. The metric aquires…
Global and local symmetries may or may not be restored inside topological defects depending upon the values of the parameters of the model. A detailed study of this parameter dependence of the core structure of strings and monopoles is…