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arXiv:2012.00701 · SciPost Physics

Spontaneous symmetry breaking in free theories with boundary potentials

Vladimir Prochazka, Alexander Söderberg

Published Aug 19, 2021• 4 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

Patterns of symmetry breaking induced by potentials at the boundary of free O(N) O ( N ) -models in d=3- \epsilon d = 3 − ϵ dimensions are studied. We show that the spontaneous symmetry breaking in these theories leads to a boundary RG flow ending with N - 1 N − 1 Neumann modes in the IR. The possibility of fluctuation-induced symmetry breaking is examined and we derive a general formula for computing one-loop effective potentials at the boundary. Using the \epsilon ϵ -expansion we test these ideas in an O(N)\oplus O(N) O ( N ) ⊕ O ( N ) -model with boundary interactions. We determine the RG flow diagram of this theory and find that it has an IR-stable critical point satisfying conformal boundary conditions. The leading correction to the effective potential is computed and we argue the existence of a phase boundary separating the region flowing to the symmetric fixed point from the region flowing to a symmetry-broken phase with a combination of Neumann and Dirchlet boundary conditions.

DOI
10.21468/scipostphys.11.2.035

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Patterns of symmetry breaking induced by potentials at the boundary of free O(N) O ( N ) -models in d=3- \epsilon d = 3 − ϵ dimensions are studied. We show that the spontaneous symmetry breaking in these theories leads to a boundary RG flow ending with N - 1 N − 1 Neumann modes in the IR. The possibility of fluctuation-induced symmetry breaking is examined and we derive a general formula for computing one-loop effective potentials at the boundary. Using the \epsilon ϵ -expansion we test these ideas in an O(N)\oplus O(N) O ( N ) ⊕ O ( N ) -model with boundary interactions. We determine the RG flow diagram of this theory and find that it has an IR-stable critical point satisfying conformal boundary conditions. The leading correction to the effective potential is computed and we argue the existence of a phase boundary separating the region flowing to the symmetric fixed point from the region flowing to a symmetry-broken phase with a combination of Neumann and Dirchlet boundary conditions.
We study spontaneous symmetry breaking in one dimensional quantum mechanical problems in terms of two-point boundary problems which lead to singular potentials containing Dirac delta functions and its derivatives. We search for broken-symmetry bound states. For a particular entanglement of boundary conditions, we show the existence of a ground state, giving rise to a spontaneous symmetry breaking, stable under the phenomenon of decoherence generated from external fluctuations. We discuss the model in the context of the "chiral" broken-symmetry states of molecules like NH3NH_3NH3​.
The vacuum dependence on boundary conditions in quantum field theories is analysed from a very general viewpoint. From this perspective, the renormalization prescriptions not only imply the renormalization of the couplings of the theory in the bulk but also the appearance of a flow in the space of boundary conditions. For regular boundaries, this flow has a large variety of fixed points and no cyclic orbit. The family of fixed points includes Neumann and Dirichlet boundary conditions. In one-dimensional field theories, pseudo-periodic and quasi-periodic boundary conditions are also RG fixed points. Under these conditions massless bosonic free field theories are conformally invariant. Among all fixed points only Neumann boundary conditions are infrared stable fixed points. All other conformal invariant boundary conditions become unstable under some relevant perturbations. In finite volumes, we analyse the dependence of the vacuum energy along the trajectories of the renormalization group flow providing an interesting framework for dark energy evolution. In contrast, the renormalization group flow on the boundary does not affect the leading behaviour of the entanglement entropy of the vacuum in one-dimensional conformally invariant bosonic theories.
We study the classification of the gapped phases or massive renormalization group (RG) flows dual to the massless RG flows under changing the sign of the coupling constants. Whereas our formalism is based on combining Higgs- or Nambu-Goldstone-type arguments with Cardy's smeared boundary conformal field theories (SBCFTs), several puzzling structures arise. More specifically, the established Higgs or Nambu-Goldstone type arguments on the duality imply that the natural basis for the gapped states should be constructed from a set of smeared Ishibashi states, which are unphysical in boundary critical phenomena. Hence, the module of the gapped phases can be outside of that of boundary critical phenomena, whereas one can still calculate characterizing quantities by applying SBCFTs to the models. For example, we demonstrate that the massive RG flow dual to the massless RG flow from the tricritical Ising model to the Ising model, one of the simplest massless RG flows, has this unusual structure. This can be regarded as a quantum field-theoretic analogue of order-disorder coexistence in lattice models. More generally, the resultant gapped phases usually spontaneously break non-group-like symmetry (or noninvertible symmetry). Our work provides systematic quantum field theoretic descriptions of such unusual phases with spontaneous symmetry breaking of non-group-like (or noninvertible) symmetries.
Our goal is to find a model for the phenomenon of spontaneous symmetry breaking arising in one dimensional quantum mechanical problems.For this purpose we consider boundary value problems related with two interior points of the real line, symmetric with respect to the origin.This approach can be treated as a presence of singular potentials containing shifted Dirac delta functions and their derivatives.From mathematical point of view we use a technique of selfadjoint extensions applied to a symmetric differential operator which has a domain containing smooth functions vanishing in two mentioned above points.We calculate the resolvent of corresponding extension and investigate its behavior if the interior points change their positions.The domain of these extensions can contain some functions that have non differentiability or discontinuity at the points mentioned above, the latter can be interpreted as an appearance of singular potentials centered at the same points.Next, broken-symmetry bound states are discovered.More precisely, for a particular entanglement of boundary conditions, there is a ground state, generating a spontaneous symmetry breaking, stable under the phenomenon of decoherence provoked from external fluctuations.We discuss the model in the context of the "chiral" broken-symmetry states of molecules like N H 3 .We show that within a Hilbert space approach a spontaneous symmetry breaking disappears if the distance between the mentioned above interior points tends to zero.
We study the three-component ${\ensuremath{\phi}}^{4}$ model on the simple cubic lattice in the presence of a cubic perturbation. To this end, we perform Monte Carlo simulations in conjunction with a finite-size scaling analysis of the data. The analysis of the renormalization group (RG) flow of a dimensionless quantity provides us with the accurate estimate ${Y}_{4}\ensuremath{-}{\ensuremath{\omega}}_{2}=0.000\phantom{\rule{0.16em}{0ex}}81(7)$ for the difference of the RG eigenvalue Y4{Y}_{4}Y4​ at the O(3)\text{O}(3)O(3)-symmetric fixed point and the correction exponent ${\ensuremath{\omega}}_{2}$ at the cubic fixed point. We determine an effective exponent ${\ensuremath{\nu}}_{\text{eff}}$ of the correlation length that depends on the strength of the breaking of the O(3)\text{O}(3)O(3) symmetry. Field theory predicts that depending on the sign of the cubic perturbation, the RG flow is attracted by the cubic fixed point, or runs to an ever increasing amplitude, indicating a fluctuation-induced first-order phase transition. We demonstrate directly the first-order nature of the phase transition for a sufficiently strong breaking of the O(3) symmetry. We obtain accurate results for the latent heat, the correlation length in the disordered phase at the transition temperature, and the interface tension for interfaces between one of the ordered phases and the disordered phase. We study how these quantities scale with the RG flow, allowing quantitative predictions for weaker breaking of the O(3)\text{O}(3)O(3) symmetry.
Recently, Gaiotto (2012 arXiv:1201.0767) considered conformal defects which produce an expansion of infrared local fields in terms of the ultraviolet (UV) ones for a given renormalization group flow. In this paper, we propose that for a boundary RG flow in two dimensions there exist boundary condition changing fields (RG defect fields) linking the UV and the infrared (IR) conformal boundary conditions which carry similar information on the expansion of boundary fields at the fixed points. We propose an expression for a pairing between IR and UV operators in terms of a four-point function with two insertions of the RG defect fields. For the boundary flows in minimal models triggered by ψ 13 perturbation, we make an explicit proposal for the RG defect fields. We check our conjecture by a number of calculations done for the example of ( p , 2) → ( p − 1, 1)⊕( p + 1, 1) flows.