Related papers: How does the geodesic rule really work for global …
We suggest a new mechanism for electroweak symmetry breaking in the supersymmetric Standard Model. Our suggestion is based on the presence of an anomalous U(1)_A gauge symmetry, which naturally arises in the four dimensional superstring…
In these lectures, I discuss the role of symmetries in particle physics. I begin by discussing global symmetries and show that they can be realized differently in nature, depending on whether or not the vacuum state is left invariant by 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…
Geometric singular perturbation theory provides a powerful mathematical framework for the analysis of 'stationary' multiple time-scale systems which possess a critical manifold, i.e. a smooth manifold of steady states for the limiting fast…
In the standard scenario, the electroweak phase transition is a first order phase transition which completes by the nucleation of critical bubbles. Recently, there has been speculation that the standard picture of the electroweak phase…
The association of broken symmetries with phase transitions is ubiquitous in condensed matter physics: crystals break translational symmetry, magnets break rotational symmetry, and superconductors break gauge symmetry. However, despite the…
The topological phase transition in the Qi-Wu-Zhang model is studied using a real-space approach. An effective Hamiltonian for the topologically protected edge-modes in a finite-size system is developed. The topological phase transition is…
We study the formation of topological textures in a nonequilibrium phase transition of an overdamped classical O(3) model in 2+1 dimensions. The phase transition is triggered through an external, time-dependent effective mass, parameterized…
The appearance of a broken supersymmetric U(1) gauge factor at the TeV scale is relevant for several reasons. If it truly exists, then one important consequence is that at the 100 GeV energy scale, the two-doublet Higgs structure is of a…
We elaborate on Abelian complex scalar models, which are dictated by natural actions (all couplings are of order one), at fixed and large global $U(1)$ charge in an arbitrary number of dimensions. The ground state $| \upsilon\rangle$ is…
The Hosotani mechanism claims to achieve gauge-symmetry breaking, for instance $SU(3) \to SU(2)\times U(1)$. To verify this claim, we propose to monitor the stability of a topological defect stable under a gauge subgroup but not under the…
The $SU(3)_L\otimes U(1)_X$ symmetry actually studied is directly broken to the electroweak symmetry $SU(2)_L\otimes U(1)_Y$ by a Higgs triplet, predicting a relevant new physics at TeV scale. This work argues, by contrast, that the higher…
Assuming the existence of a supersymmetric U(1) gauge factor at the TeV energy scale (motivated either by the superstring-inspired E_6 model or low-energy electroweak phenomenology), several important consequences are presented. The…
These notes form part of a lecture course on gauge theory. The material covered is standard in the physics literature, but perhaps less well-known to mathematicians. The purpose of these notes is to make spontaneous symmetry breaking and…
The concept of (global) gauge symmetry breaking plays an important role in many areas of physics. Since the corresponding symmetry is a gauge symmetry, its breaking is actually gauge-dependent. Thus, it is possible to design gauges which…
We study the viability of five-dimensional gauge theories as candidates for the origin of the Higgs field and its mechanism for spontaneous symmetry breaking. Within the framework of lattice field theory, we consider the simplest model of…
We study the interplay between the spontaneous breaking of a global symmetry of the Higgs sector and gauge-mediated supersymmetry breaking, in the framework of a supersymmetric model with global SU(3) symmetry. In addition to solving the…
This work explores a deformation of the Kitaev toric code that induces a phase transition out of the topologically ordered phase. By placing the model on a cylinder, the bulk global 1-form symmetries separate into distinct boundary…
Motivated by the $\Omega$-spectrum proposal of unique gapped ground states by Kitaev, we study adiabatic cycles in gapped quantum spin systems from various perspectives. We give a few exactly solvable models in one and two spatial…
We construct realistic supergravity models where supersymmetry breaking arises from the D-terms of an anomalous U(1) gauge symmetry broken at the Planck scale. Effective action for these theories at sub-Planck energies (including higher…