Phonons are Nambu-Goldstone Bosons (IMAGE)

University of California - Berkeley

Phonons are Nambu-Goldstone Bosons

Caption

Collective vibrations in a crystal, called phonons, are a type of Nambu-Goldstone boson. UC Berkeley physicists have proved that counting the number of bosons in a material, whether a solid crystal, a magnet, or a superfluid, tells you what type of behavior the material will have at low temperatures where symmetry is spontaneously broken.

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Haruki Watanabe/UC Berkeley.

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