Effective Field Theories for Material Media

Abstract

We review recent progress in understanding certain aspects of condensed matter systems from a high energy theory perspective. We discuss effective field theories that describe collective bulk and localized excitations in a variety of solid and fluid systems. Particular emphasis is placed on the role played by spacetime symmetries and their spontaneous breaking. The resulting Goldstone dynamics can be seen as underlying a wide variety of phenomena. We attempt to bridge the language gap between subfields while underscoring the numerous conceptual similarities.

Invited review article for Physics Reports. 144 pages, 7 captioned figures, 2 tables