Spontaneously broken boosts and the Goldstone continuum

Abstract

The spontaneous breaking of boost invariance is ubiquitous in nature, yet the associated Goldstone bosons are nowhere to be seen. We discuss why some subtleties are to be expected in the Goldstone phenomenon for spontaneously broken boosts, and derive the corresponding quantum mechanical, non-perturbative Goldstone theorem. Despite similarities with more standard Goldstone theorems, we show by examples that ours can be obeyed by quite unusual spectra of low-energy excitations. In particular, for non-relativistic Fermi liquids, we prove that it is obeyed by the particle-hole continuum. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first example of a Goldstone theorem obeyed by a continuum rather than by (approximately stable) single-particle Goldstone boson states.

arXiv comment33 pages + appendices, reference added

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• Quadrupole gauge theory: anti-Higgs mechanism and elastic dual