Colloquium October 2- When a Symmetry Breaks

by Prof. Hitoshi Murayama (University of California, Berkeley & Kavli Institute IPMU, Tokyo)

Thursday 2 Oct 2025, 15:00 → 16:30 Europe/Rome

1/1-1 - Aula "A. Rostagni" (Dipartimento di Fisica e Astronomia - Edificio Marzolo)

Speaker: Prof. Hitoshi Murayama 

Affiliation: Professor at the University of Berkeley and Founding Director of the Kavli IPMU in Tokyo

Date: October 2nd, 2025, 3 p.m.

Where: Aula Rostagni 

Abstract: What is common among a magnet, a halibut, a rack of laundry, cubes of ice, superconductor, and the Higgs boson? The concept of spontaneous symmetry breaking is a common theme for many natural phenomena. I'll describe the basic concept and its applications. In particular, the original concepts from Anderson, Nambu, Goldstone, and Higgs do not quite work in many systems that include a magnet on your fridge. I generalize the concept so that it is applicable to all known natural phenomena around us.

youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@UniPadovaAulaRostagni