Timeline for What is the Kosterlitz -Thouless transition?
Current License: CC BY-SA 3.0
4 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
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| Oct 12, 2016 at 5:03 | comment | added | Adam | Spontaneous symmetry breaking is the fact that, for example in 3D, at low temperature, all the arrows will point in one prefered direction, chosen at random, and not really change directions, even though there is nothing telling you which direction that should be (the system itself has a symmetry, but the state in which it is breaks the symmetry by picking one prefered direction). | |
| Oct 12, 2016 at 5:00 | comment | added | Adam | Excitations is a terminology from condensed matter. What I mean is spin configurations that are different from the ground-state (lowest energy state(s)). If you rotate the arrows by a very small angle, the energy changes, but it is still very close to that of the ground-state, so this is a low energy excitation. | |
| Oct 11, 2016 at 22:44 | comment | added | MomoTheSir | In your explanation you talk about excitations and the Mermin Wagner theorem. What are excitations? Also, what is spontaneous symmetry breaking, and why can it not happen in the 2D xy model? | |
| Oct 8, 2016 at 10:41 | history | answered | Adam | CC BY-SA 3.0 |