SciPost Submission Page

A model of persistent breaking of continuous symmetry

by Noam Chai, Anatoly Dymarsky, Mikhail Goykhman, Ritam Sinha, Michael Smolkin

Submission summary

As Contributors:	Noam Chai
Arxiv Link:	https://arxiv.org/abs/2111.02474v2 (pdf)
Date accepted:	2022-05-23
Date submitted:	2022-04-14 02:43
Submitted by:	Chai, Noam
Submitted to:	SciPost Physics
Academic field:	Physics
Specialties:	High-Energy Physics - Theory
Approach:	Theoretical

Abstract

We consider a UV-complete field-theoretic model in general dimensions, including $d=2+1$, that exhibits spontaneous breaking of continuous symmetry, persisting to arbitrarily large temperatures. Our model consists of two copies of the long-range vector models, with $O(m)$ and $O(N-m)$ global symmetry groups, perturbed by double-trace operators. Using conformal perturbation theory we find weakly-coupled IR fixed points for $N\geq 6$ that reveal a spontaneous breaking of global symmetry. Namely, at finite temperature the lower rank group is broken, with the pattern persisting at all temperatures due to scale-invariance. We provide evidence that the models in question are unitary and invariant under full conformal symmetry. Our work generalizes recent results, which considered the particular case of $m=1$ and reported persistent breaking of the discrete $\mathbb{Z}_2=O(1)$. Furthermore, we show that this model exhibits a continuous family of weakly interacting field theories at finite $N$.

Published as SciPost Phys. 12, 181 (2022)

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