Related papers: How does the geodesic rule really work for global …
In an Abelian gauge symmetry, spontaneously broken at a first order phase transition, we investigate the evolution of two and three bubbles of the broken symmetry phase. The full field equations are evolved and we concentrate in particular…
We examine the basic assumptions underlying a scenario due to Kibble that is widely used to estimate the production of topological defects. We argue that one of the crucial assumptions, namely the geodesic rule, although completely valid…
This paper aims to resolve the incompatibility between two extant gauge-invariant accounts of the Abelian Higgs mechanism: the first account uses global gauge symmetry breaking, and the second eliminates spontaneous symmetry breaking…
The classical evolution equations of the Abelian Higgs model are studied at temperatures below the Ginsburg temperature of a phase transition which is assumed to be second order. It is shown that the initial thermal fluctuations provide a…
At finite temperature, the field along a linear stretch of correlation length size is supposed to trace the shortest path in the field space given the two end point values, known as the Geodesic rule. In this study, we compute the…
When a symmetry gets spontaneously broken in a phase transition, topological defects are typically formed. The theoretical picture of how this happens in a breakdown of a global symmetry, the Kibble-Zurek mechanism, is well established and…
We analyze the evolution of scalar and gauge fields during first order phase transitions and show how the Kibble mechanism for the formation of topological defects emerges from the underlying dynamics, paying particular attention to…
We generalize the geodesic rule to the case of formation of higher codimensional global defects. Relying on energetic arguments, we argue that, for such defects, the geometric structures of interest are the totally geodesic submanifolds. On…
We investigate bubble dynamics in a holographic superfluid undergoing a first-order phase transition with spontaneous $U(1)$ symmetry breaking. Near the nucleation threshold, the system exhibits universal critical behavior governed by a…
In the course of a non-equilibrium continuous phase transition, the dynamics ceases to be adiabatic in the vicinity of the critical point as a result of the critical slowing down (the divergence of the relaxation time in the neighborhood of…
The order parameters which are thought to detect U(1) gauge symmetry breaking in a superconductor are both non-local and gauge dependent. For that reason they are also ambiguous as a guide to phase structure. We point out that a global…
Gauge symmetries and Higgs mechanisms are key features of theories describing high-energy particle physics and collective phenomena in statistical and condensed-matter physics. In this review we address the collective behavior of systems of…
Motivated by recent work connecting Higgs phases to symmetry protected topological (SPT) phases, we investigate the interplay of gauge redundancy and global symmetry in lattice gauge theories with Higgs fields in the presence of a boundary.…
In the nonadiabatic dynamics across a quantum phase transition, the Kibble-Zurek mechanism predicts that the formation of topological defects is suppressed as a universal power law with the quench time. In inhomogeneous systems, the…
We review the dual relationship between various compact U(1) lattice models and Abelian Higgs models, the latter being the disorder field theories of line-like topological excitations in the systems. We point out that the predicted…
When a system is driven across a second-order quantum phase transition, the number of defects which are produced scales with the speed of the variation of the tuning parameter according to a universal law described by the Kibble-Zurek…
The dynamics of symmetry breaking is an important issue in many branches of physics including the real time onset of the Higgs-effect. In this thesis I examine the linear and non-linear evolution of different systems in the broken symmetric…
We consider global topological defects in symmetry breaking models with a non-canonical kinetic term. Apart from a mass parameter entering the potential, one additional dimensional parameter arises in such models -- a ``kinetic'' mass. The…
The Kibble-Zurek mechanism describes the formation of topological defects during spontaneous symmetry breaking for quite different systems. Shortly after the big bang, the isotropy of the Higgs-field is broken during the expansion and…
A natural question about Quantum Field Theory is whether there is a deformation to a trivial gapped phase. If the underlying theory has an anomaly, then symmetric deformations can never lead to a trivial phase. We discuss such discrete…