# A question about spontaneous symmetry breaking at macroscopic limit

The question relates to this post.

Spontaneous symmetry breaking is somehow a volume effect, that in-principle only happens at infinity large system. Weinberg in the second volume of his QFT used a chair demostrated the lost of rotational symmetry due to large scale of the chair.

p. 163

We do not have to look far for examples of spontaneous symmetry breaking. Consider a chair. The equations governing the atoms of the chair are rotationally symmetric, but a solution of these equations, the actual chair, has a definite orientation in space. Here we will be concerned not so much with the breaking of symmetries by objects like chairs, but rather with the symmetry breaking in the ground state of any realistic quantum field theory, the vacuum.

p.164-165

Spontaneous symmetry breaking actually occurs only for idealized systems that are infinitely large. The appearance of broken symmetry for a chair arises because it has a macroscopic moment of inertia $I$, so that its ground state is part of a tower of rotationally excited states whose energies are separated by only tiny amounts, of order $\frac{{\hbar}^2}{I}$. This gives the state vector of the chair an exquisite sensitivity to external perturbations; even very weak external fields will shift the energy by much more than the energy difference of these rotational levels. In consequence, any rotationally asymmetric external field will cause the ground state or any other state of the chair with definite angular momentum numbers rapidly to develop components with other angular momentum quantum numbers. The states of the chair that are relatively stable with respect to small external perturbations are not those with definite angular momentum quantum numbers, but rather those with a definite orientation, in which the rotational symmetry of the underlying theory is broken. For the vacuum also,

To a very good approximation, the chair is described by quantum electrodynamics $$L= -\frac{1}{4} F_{\mu\nu}F^{\mu\nu} + i \bar{\psi}(\gamma^{\mu}D_{\mu}-m) \psi$$ The rotation of chair corresponds to $SO(3)$ group as a subgroup of the Lorentz group $SO(1,3)$. If vacuum is similar with the chair, the rotational symmetry could also break together with global rigid $O(N)$ symmetry. The standard argument that Higgs boson being a scalar, is to keep Lorentz invariance. If the $SO(3)$ rotational symmetry is lost, then this argument is not necessarily valid. Is there any other rationalization for the Higgs boson being scalar?

If vacuum is not similar with the chair, why only global rigid $O(N)$ symmetry is broken but not $SO(3)$? Is that a pure guess then confirmed experimentally?

• Yes, everything in SM is basically a pure (POOR) guess. There is no single fundamental idea like in GR or SR. Well, you can say symmetry is good enough fundamental idea, the problem is -- it was discovered by some woman long ago before SM. SM took everything good from Electrodynamics and Mechanics and abused it by smoking QM. – Asphir Dom Feb 6 '14 at 10:40