The spontaneous symmetry breaking cannot happen in quantum mechanics that describes finite … See more

Consider a symmetric upward dome with a trough circling the bottom. If a ball is put at the very peak of the dome, the system is symmetric with respect to a rotation around the center axis. But the ball may spontaneo… See more

In particle physics, the force carrier particles are normally specified by field equations with gauge symmetry; their equations predict that certain measurements will be the same at any point in the field. For instance, fi… See more

Most phases of matter can be understood through the lens of spontaneous symmetry breaking. For example, crystals are periodic arrays of atoms that are not invariant under all translations (only under a small subset of translatio… See more

For spontaneous symmetry breaking to occur, there must be a system in which there are several equally likely outcomes. The system as a whole is therefore symmetric with respect to these outcomes. However, i… See more

On October 7, 2008, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences awarded the 2008 Nobel Prize in Physics to three scientists for their work in subatomic physics symmetry breaking. Yoichiro Nambu, of the University of Chicago, … See more