Published March 11, 2002 | Version v1
Journal article

Spontaneously broken spacetime symmetries and Goldstone's theorem

  • 1. Jefferson Physical Laboratory, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02138 (United States)
  • 2. Department of Physics, University of California at San Diego, La Jolla, California 92093 (United States)

Description

Goldstone's theorem states that there is a massless mode for each broken symmetry generator. It has been known for a long time that the naive generalization of this counting fails to give the correct number of massless modes for spontaneously broken spacetime symmetries. We explain how to get the right count of massless modes in the general case, and discuss examples involving spontaneously broken Poincare and conformal invariance

Additional details

Publishing Information

Journal Title
Physical Review Letters
Journal Volume
88
Journal Issue
10
Journal Page Range
p. 101602-101602.4
ISSN
0031-9007
CODEN
PRLTAO

INIS

Country of Publication
United States
Country of Input or Organization
International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA)
INIS RN
35011095
Subject category
S72: PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS;
Descriptors DEI
CONFORMAL INVARIANCE; GOLDSTONE BOSONS; LORENTZ TRANSFORMATIONS; POINCARE GROUPS; QUANTUM FIELD THEORY; SPACE-TIME; SYMMETRY BREAKING
Descriptors DEC
BOSONS; ELEMENTARY PARTICLES; FIELD THEORIES; INVARIANCE PRINCIPLES; LIE GROUPS; POSTULATED PARTICLES; SYMMETRY GROUPS; TRANSFORMATIONS

Optional Information

Notes
(c) 2002 The American Physical Society