In the world of condensed matter physics, a seemingly familiar topic like Fermi liquids still holds intriguing secrets waiting to be uncovered. Although every undergraduate student learns about Fermi liquids, their surprising stability under interactions has remained fascinating. Recently, our research (arXiv:2302.12731) has shed new light on this mystery by unraveling a profound topological reason behind the stability of Fermi liquids. In this post, we will take you on an exciting journey into the uncharted territories of phase space, where we have discovered new ways to understand and classify Fermi surface anomalies.
Quantum information science is a fascinating field that has been pushing the limits of what we thought was possible. One of the most important tasks in quantum information technology is quantum state tomography. Simply put, it involves reconstructing a quantum state by making repeated measurements of copies of the state. However, reconstructing the full density matrix requires exponentially many samples in many-body systems. But don’t worry, researchers have found a way to predict a collection of properties of the quantum system with only a polynomial number of samples! This is known as classical shadow tomography (Huang, Kueng, Preskill).
Mass is one of the fundamental properties of matter, and understanding its origin has been a central question in physics for decades. In the standard model of particle physics, the Yukawa-Higgs mechanism is responsible for the mass generation of fundamental fermions. This mechanism involves the spontaneous symmetry breaking via the condensation of a scalar Higgs field that couples to the fermion field as a bilinear mass via the Yukawa coupling. This significant theoretical discovery was acknowledged by the Nobel Prize in Physics 2013. But what if we told you that there is a new mechanism of mass generation for fermions without the need for symmetry breaking or condensing any Higgs field? This new mechanism is referred to as symmetric mass generation (SMG), and it has recently generated broad interest in both condensed matter and high-energy physics communities.
The known universe consists of four fundamental forces: electromagnetic force, weak force, strong force, and gravity. The first three forces can be described theoretically. Gravity, however—which makes up the vast space of the universe—lacks a quantum theory. For three decades, scientists have tried to understand quantum gravity by using a model called the holographic universe.
The Noether theorem is a fascinating concept in physics that relates continuous symmetries to conservation laws. This theorem has been used to explain many of the fundamental principles of the universe, such as momentum-energy conservation and charge conservation. But what happens when symmetries emerge? Do emergent symmetries lead to emergent conservation laws?
