Video URL

https://pirsa.org/18100087

Macroscopic Effects of Quantum Anomalies

Mottola, E. (2018). Macroscopic Effects of Quantum Anomalies . Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics. https://pirsa.org/18100087

Mottola, Emil. Macroscopic Effects of Quantum Anomalies . Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics, Oct. 17, 2018, https://pirsa.org/18100087 

          @misc{ scivideos_PIRSA:18100087,
            doi = {10.48660/18100087},
            url = {https://pirsa.org/18100087},
            author = {Mottola, Emil},
            keywords = {Other Physics},
            language = {en},
            title = {Macroscopic Effects of Quantum Anomalies },
            publisher = {Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics},
            year = {2018},
            month = {oct},
            note = {PIRSA:18100087 see, \url{https://scivideos.org/pirsa/18100087}}
          }

Emil Mottola Los Alamos National Laboratory

DOI 10.48660/18100087
Source Repository PIRSA
Collection
Talk Type Scientific Series
Subject

Abstract

In this first of two lectures, intended to be a pedagogical introduction, I will review the quantum field theory origin of anomalies starting with the more familiar example of the axial anomaly in QED, emphasizing the infrared effects and the appearance of a two-particle massless state, similar to a Cooper pairing in superconductor, associated with both the axial and conformal anomalies in two and four dimensions. In both cases the effective action of the anomaly is non-local, but may be expressed in a local form by the introduction of a bosonic field, which one can verify becomes a bona fide propagating quantum field in its own right. At finite chiral chemical potential this boson is a chiral density wave, a gapless pseudo-scalar collective excitation of the Fermi surface of a dissipationless chiral superfluid, analogous to the Goldstone-Nambu boson of spontaneous symmetry breaking. In the limit of vanishing chiral background the boson is a chiral collective mode of the Dirac vacuum itself, which therefore supports an axion-like boson excitation with a two-photon coupling, arising directly from the axial anomaly.