Event time:
Monday, October 31, 2016 - 3:30pm to 4:30pm
Location:
Sloane Physics Laboratory (SPL), 57
(Location is wheelchair accessible)
217 Prospect St.
New Haven, CT
06511
Event description:
What is common among a magnet, a flounder, a rack of laundry, your heart on the left of your body, and the Higgs boson? The concept of spontaneous symmetry breaking is ubiquitous among many natural phenomena.
I’ll describe the basic concept and its applications. In particular, the original concepts from Anderson, Nambu, Goldstone, and Higgs do not quite work in many systems that include a magnet on your fridge. I generalize the concept so that it is applicable to all known natural phenomena around us.