Speaker
Description
It was recently established that spontaneous symmetry breaking (SSB) can persist at all temperatures in certain quantum field theories (QFTs) that involve two scalar fields. This construction is based on the existence of a suitable fixed point, promoting the QFT to a conformal field theory (CFT) and thereby ensuring that the theory is well-defined in the high-temperature limit. In my contribution, I will discuss recent advances in extending these theories to include Dirac fermions as well multiple scalar fields. I will show that the inclusion of these additional degrees of freedom does not lead to any new fully interacting CFTs that show SSB at finite temperature in three dimensions. Furthermore, I will present a construction including Dirac fermions that defines a class of QFTs that show spontaneous breaking of a spacetime symmetry above a critical temperature. If time permits, I will also discuss the possibility of extending these ideas to the Berezinskii-Kosterlitz-Thouless transition.
| Affiliation | Ruhr-University Bochum |
|---|---|
| Link to paper | https://journals.aps.org/prl/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevLett.134.041602, https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.19890 |
| Career status | PhD student |