相关论文: Symmetries, Symmetry Breaking, Gauge Symmetries

Gauge symmetries play a central role, both in the mathematical foundations as well as the conceptual construction of modern (particle) physics theories. However, it is yet unclear whether they form a necessary component of theories, or…

Gauge symmetries are often highlighted as a fundamental cornerstone of modern physics. But at the same time, it is commonly emphasized that gauge symmetries are not a fundamental feature of nature but merely redundancies in our description.…

This note focuses the problem of motivating the use of gauge symmetries (being the identity on the observables) from general principles, beyond their practical success, starting from global gauge symmetries and then by emphasizing the…

Symmetry, in particular gauge symmetry, is a fundamental principle in theoretical physics. It is intimately connected to the geometry of fibre bundles. A refinement to the gauge principle, known as ``spontaneous symmetry breaking'', leads…

The gauge symmetry is one of the most important concepts in modern physics, but there are two conflicting views on its meaning or interpretation. The standard view is that local gauge symmetry is the basis of the pursue of fundamental…

The paper investigates the spontaneous breaking of gauge symmetries in gauge theories from a philosophical angle, taking into account the fact that the notion of a spontaneously broken local gauge symmetry, though widely employed in…

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…

Symmetry is one of the most general and useful concepts in physics. A theory or a system that has a symmetry is fundamentally constrained by it. The same constraints do not apply when the symmetry is broken. The quantitative determination…

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 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…

Spontaneous symmetry breaking originats in quantum mechanical measurement of the relevant observable defining the physical situation, order parameter is the average of this observable. A modification is made on the random-phase postulate…

Gauge symmetry plays a key role in our description of subatomic matter. The vanishing photon mass, the long-ranged Coulomb law, and asymptotic freedom are all due to gauge invariance. Recent years have seen tantalizing progress in the…

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…

For the description of observables and states of a quantum system, it may be convenient to use a canonical Weyl algebra of which only a subalgebra $\mathcal A$, with a non-trivial center $\mathcal Z$, describes observables, the other Weyl…

Gauge symmetries emerge from a redundant description of the effective action for light degrees of freedom after the decoupling of heavy modes. This redundant description avoids the use of explicit constraints in configuration space. For…

We consider symmetry as a foundational concept in quantum mechanics and rewrite quantum mechanics and measurement axioms in this description. We argue that issues related to measurements and physical reality of states can be better…

Perhaps the most important aspect of symmetry in physics is the idea that a state does not need to have the same symmetries as the theory that describes it. This phenomenon is known as spontaneous symmetry breaking. In these lecture notes,…

I discuss gauge and global symmetries in particle physics, condensed matter physics, and quantum gravity. In a modern understanding, global symmetries are approximate and gauge symmetries may be emergent. (Based on a lecture at the April,…

Classifying the phases of gauge theories is hindered by the lack of local order parameters. In particular, the standard Wilson's and 't Hooft's non-local order parameters are known to be insufficient to explain the existence of the plethora…

Spontaneous symmetry breaking is a cornerstone of modern physics, defining a wealth of phenomena in condensed-matter and high-energy physics, and beyond. It requires an infinite number of degrees of freedom, and even then, for continuous…