Spontaneous symmetry breaking and Nambu–Goldstone bosons in quantum many-body systems
- Spontaneous symmetry breaking is a general principle that constitutes the underlying concept of a vast number of physical phenomena ranging from ferromagnetism and superconductivity in condensed matter physics to the Higgs mechanism in the standard model of elementary particles. I focus on manifestations of spontaneously broken symmetries in systems that are not Lorentz invariant, which include both nonrelativistic systems as well as relativistic systems at nonzero density, providing a self-contained review of the properties of spontaneously broken symmetries specific to such theories. Topics covered include: (i) Introduction to the mathematics of spontaneous symmetry breaking and the Goldstone theorem. (ii) Minimization of Higgs-type potentials for higher-dimensional representations. (iii) Counting rules for Nambu–Goldstone bosons and their dispersion relations. (iv) Construction of effective Lagrangians. Specific examples in both relativistic and nonrelativistic physics are worked out in detail.
| Author: | Tomáš Brauner |
|---|---|
| URN: | urn:nbn:de:hebis:30:3-253115 |
| DOI: | https://doi.org/10.3390/sym2020609 |
| ISSN: | 2073-8994 |
| Parent Title (English): | Symmetry |
| Publisher: | Molecular Diversity Preservation International (MDPI) |
| Place of publication: | Basel |
| Document Type: | Article |
| Language: | English |
| Date of Publication (online): | 2012/06/27 |
| Date of first Publication: | 2010/04/07 |
| Publishing Institution: | Universitätsbibliothek Johann Christian Senckenberg |
| Release Date: | 2012/06/27 |
| Tag: | Nambu–Goldstone bosons; effective field theory; spontaneous symmetry breaking |
| Volume: | 2.2010 |
| Issue: | 2 |
| Page Number: | 49 |
| First Page: | 609 |
| Last Page: | 657 |
| HeBIS-PPN: | 357590430 |
| Institutes: | Physik / Physik |
| Dewey Decimal Classification: | 5 Naturwissenschaften und Mathematik / 53 Physik / 530 Physik |
| Sammlungen: | Universitätspublikationen |
| Licence (German): |  Creative Commons - Namensnennung 3.0 |
