The Goldstone theorem implies the appearance of an ungapped mode whenever a continuous global symmetry is spontaneously broken. In general it does not say anything about the precise form of the dispersion relation nor does it imply that there is one massless mode for each broken symmetry generator. It is a well-established fact that even for relativistic field theories in the presence of a chemical potential Goldstone modes with quadratic dispersion relation, the type II Goldstone bosons, appear in the spectrum. We develop two holographic models that feature type II Goldstone modes as part of the quasinormal mode spectrum. The models are based on simple generalizations with U(2) symmetry of the well-studied holographic s-wave superfluid. Our results include Goldstone modes without broken generators but with unusual realization of symmetries and a frequency dependent conductivity of striking resemblance to the one of Graphene.
We demonstrate that the number of Nambu-Goldstone bosons is always equal to the number of conserved currents inside the scenario of non-Hermitian field theories with spontaneous symmetry breaking. This eliminates the redundancies which normally appears in Hermitian field theories, specifically when the Lagrangian under analysis violates explicitly the Lorentz symmetry.
Two dimensional conformal field theories, can be described by their pseudo Goldstone bosons when the conformal symmetry is spontaneously and anomalously broken. We show that the Schwarzian action of these bosons leads to the Cardy formula without using modular invariance. As a result, the Cardy formula applies to conformal field theories on a cylinder and chiral theories in one dimension. This also explains why the Cardy--Verlinde formula for theories on $S^1 \times S^{d-2}$ can be written in the form of the Cardy formula of an effective two dimensional theory.
We study the spectrum of scalar charged operators in Conformal Field Theories (CFTs) with a $U(1)$ global symmetry. The charged operators are dual, by the state-operator correspondence, to homogenous charged states on the sphere. Such states can break the $U(1)$ symmetry, and we define what we call the large $f$ regime in the CFT as one where the symmetry breaking scale is much higher than the scale of the CFT sphere. In such a regime, there is (an approximate) Goldstone boson associated to the breaking. We show that consistency of the Goldstone boson physics implies that the spectrum of state…
The very near horizon regions of nonextremal black holes have a conformal symmetry which is anomalous and spontaneously broken by the Rindler vacuum. Therefore, these black holes can effectively be described by the pseudo Goldstone bosons of conformal symmetry and their Schwarzian action which is determined by the breakdown of the conformal symmetry to $SL(2)$. In Euclidean gravity, the Schwarzian action leads to the Wald entropy of nonextremal black holes. These results are consistent with the neutral limit of near extremal charged black holes described by near $AdS_2$ space--times.
In this paper we investigate the low energy shear modes in fluid systems with spontaneously broken translations by a specific holographic model. In absence of momentum relaxation, we find that there exist two decoupled gapless modes in the transverse channel, one of which is purely diffusive and the other corresponds to vortex like excitations. The diffusive mode is associated with the conservation of momentum and the vortex mode can be viewed as the Goldstone mode of the spontaneous symmetry breaking. Switching on an external source which breaks the translations explicitly but weakly, the wou…
General spinors in polar form display a structure that is made up by real scalar degrees of freedom plus six components which can be recognized as Goldstone bosons: in the present paper we show that of all singular spinors, Weyl and Majorana spinors have no real degree of freedom and so that they can be interpreted as pure Goldstone states.
We study a scalar zero mode originated from extradimensional components of a gauge field in a six-dimensional theory compactified on a magnetized torus. We confirm it is a Nambu-Goldstone boson of the translational symmetry on the torus which is breaking spontaneously due to magnetic flux. We also show explicitly it is massless up to the two-loop level. Moreover, we discuss full order contributions by considering the effective potential.
We describe how Goldstone bosons of spontaneous symmetry breaking $G \to H$ can reproduce anomalies of UV theories under the symmetry group $G$ at the nonperturbative level. This is done by giving a general definition of Wess-Zumino-Witten terms in terms of the invertible field theories in $d+1$ dimensions which describe the anomalies of $d$-dimensional UV theories. The hidden local symmetry $\widehat H$, which is used to describe Goldstone bosons in coset construction $G/H$, plays an important role. Our definition also naturally leads to generalized $θ$-angles of the hidden local gauge group …
We demonstrate that when there is spontaneous symmetry breaking in any system, relativistic or non-relativistic, the dynamic of the Nambu-Goldstone bosons is governed by the Quantum Yang-Baxter equations. These equations describe the triangular dynamical relations between pairs of Nambu-Goldstone bosons and the degenerate vacuum. We then formulate a theorem and a corollary showing that these relations guarantee the appropriate dispersion relation and the appropriate counting for the Nambu-Goldstone bosons.
We show that the field theories dual to the homogeneous holographic models with spontaneously broken translations display several distinctive properties of quasicrystals, aperiodic crystals with long-range order (e.g. incommensurate charge density waves). This interpretation suggests that the longitudinal diffusive mode, observed in the spectrum of excitations of these systems, is the diffusive Goldstone boson typical of quasicrystals -- the phason. Moreover, following this idea, and using the effective field theory formalism for Goldstone modes in dissipative systems, we are able to derive th…
We investigate the existence of double copy structure, or the lack thereof, in higher derivative operators for Nambu-Goldstone bosons. At the leading ${\cal O}(p^2)$, tree amplitudes of Nambu-Goldstone bosons in the adjoint representation can be (trivially) expressed as the double copy of itself and the cubic bi-adjoint scalar theory, through the Kawai-Lewellen-Tye bilinear kernel. At the next-to-leading ${\cal O}(p^4)$ there exist four operators in general, among which we identify one operator whose amplitudes exhibit the flavor-kinematics duality and can be written as the double copy of ${\c…
In recent work Alexandre, Ellis, Millington and Seynaeve have extended the Goldstone theorem to non-Hermitian Hamiltonians that possess a discrete antilinear symmetry such as $PT$. They restricted their discussion to those realizations of antilinear symmetry in which all the energy eigenvalues of the Hamiltonian are real. Here we extend the discussion to the two other realizations possible with antilinear symmetry, namely energies in complex conjugate pairs or Jordan-block Hamiltonians that are not diagonalizable at all. In particular, we show that under certain circumstances it is possible fo…
We investigate the Englert-Brout-Higgs-Guralnik-Hagen-Kibble mechanism for non-Hermitian field theories with local non-Abelian gauge symmetry in different regions of their parameter spaces. We demonstrate that the two aspects of the mechanism, that is giving mass to gauge vector bosons and at the same time preventing the existence of massless Goldstone bosons, remain to be synchronized in all regimes characterized by a modified CPT symmetry. In the domain of parameter space where the "would be Goldstone bosons" can be identified the gauge vector bosons become massive and the Goldstone bosons c…
We discuss the extension of the Goldstone and Englert-Brout-Higgs mechanisms to non-Hermitian Hamiltonians that possess an antilinear PT symmetry. We study a model due to Alexandre, Ellis, Millington and Seynaeve and show that for the spontaneous breakdown of a continuous global symmetry we obtain a massless Goldstone boson in all three of the antilinear symmetry realizations: eigenvalues real, eigenvalues in complex conjugate pairs, and eigenvalues real but eigenvectors incomplete. In this last case we show that it is possible for the Goldstone boson mode to be a zero-norm state. For the brea…
