Timeline for Why does the Higgs field fall into the same ground state at all points across space?
Current License: CC BY-SA 3.0
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| Oct 13, 2016 at 13:43 | comment | added | Ilmari Karonen | Anyway, while looking to see what, if anything, had been written about this topic already, I stumbled across this question, whose answers seem to claim that the real answer is that there really isn't any actual symmetry breaking going on with the Higgs field. | |
| Oct 13, 2016 at 13:42 | comment | added | Ilmari Karonen | Perhaps I'm being naïve here, but I don't see why it's so obvious. Generally, when you have spontaneous symmetry breaking of a spatially extended field, it does not break in the same direction everywhere, and you end up with domain walls or other topological defects where regions with different phase meet. Sure, such an inhomogeneous state must be metastable at best, since eliminating the domain walls would reduce the total energy, but the relaxation timescale can be very long. | |
| Oct 13, 2016 at 7:27 | vote | accept | Eweler | ||
| Oct 13, 2016 at 7:16 | history | answered | SRS | CC BY-SA 3.0 |