Anamalous Symmetry Breaking and its Macroscopic Manifestations
| Date/Time: | Thursday, 04 Apr 2019 from 4:10 pm to 5:00 pm |
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| Location: | Phys 0003 |
| Phone: | 515-294-5441 |
| Channel: | College of Liberal Arts and Sciences |
| Actions: | Download iCal/vCal | Email Reminder |
Abstract: In nature it may happen that a classical symmetry and the corresponding conservation law are violated by quantum effects. As an example, if electrons were massless then the difference between the number of particles with spin parallel or anti-parallel to their momentum would be classically conserved. However, in the presence of external electromagnetic fields this symmetry is broken by a quantum effect known as the axial anomaly. Some time ago it was shown that the axial anomaly may lead to a new class of macroscopic transport phenomena called chiral effects. These effects are similar to superconductivity and superfluidity in the sense that they are a macroscopic manifestation of quantum dynamics. During recent years there was an active discussion of chiral effects in different contexts, including primordial plasma in the early Universe, quark-gluon plasma in heavy-ion experiments, and novel systems of condensed matter such as Weyl and Dirac semi-metals. In my talk I will review the basics of the anomalous phenomena, the recent developments in this field, and my own works on the subject.
Bio: Andrey received his B. Sc. and M. Sc. at the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology. During this time, he did research at the Institute for Theoretical and Experimental Physics, supervisor Valentine I. Zakharov. He received his Ph.D. at MIT, supervisor Krishna Rajagopal. Currently he is an Oppenheimer Fellow at LANL. More information can be found at https://www.lanl.gov/careers/career-opti...ellows.php