Publication
Spontaneous symmetry breaking in a quadratically driven nonlinear photonic lattice
Abstract
We investigate the occurrence of a phase transition, characterized by the spontaneous breaking of a discrete symmetry, in a driven-dissipative Bose-Hubbard lattice in the presence of two-photon coherent driving. The driving term does not lift the original U(1) symmetry completely and a discrete Z(2) symmetry is left. When driving the bottom of the Bose-Hubbard band, a mean-field analysis of the steady state reveals a second-order transition from a symmetric phase to a quasicoherent state with a finite expectation value of the Bose field. For larger driving frequency, the phase diagram shows a third region, where both phases are stable and the transition becomes of first order.
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Related concepts (30)
Symmetry breaking
In physics, symmetry breaking is a phenomenon where a disordered but symmetric state collapses into an ordered, but less symmetric state. This collapse is often one of many possible bifurcations that a particle can take as it approaches a lower energy state. Due to the many possibilities, an observer may assume the result of the collapse to be arbitrary. This phenomenon is fundamental to quantum field theory (QFT), and further, contemporary understandings of physics.
Spontaneous symmetry breaking
Spontaneous symmetry breaking is a spontaneous process of symmetry breaking, by which a physical system in a symmetric state spontaneously ends up in an asymmetric state. In particular, it can describe systems where the equations of motion or the Lagrangian obey symmetries, but the lowest-energy vacuum solutions do not exhibit that same symmetry. When the system goes to one of those vacuum solutions, the symmetry is broken for perturbations around that vacuum even though the entire Lagrangian retains that symmetry.
Symmetry group
In group theory, the symmetry group of a geometric object is the group of all transformations under which the object is invariant, endowed with the group operation of composition. Such a transformation is an invertible mapping of the ambient space which takes the object to itself, and which preserves all the relevant structure of the object. A frequent notation for the symmetry group of an object X is G = Sym(X). For an object in a metric space, its symmetries form a subgroup of the isometry group of the ambient space.
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