The Benefits That Physics Derives from the Concept of Symmetry

A special issue of Symmetry (ISSN 2073-8994). This special issue belongs to the section "Physics".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: 31 August 2024 | Viewed by 1192

Special Issue Editors

Department of Physics, University of Naples Federico II, 80126 Napoli, Italy
Interests: high energy physics; quantum physics; detectorstechnology; artificial intelligence
Max Planck Institute for the Physics of Complex Systems, Nöthnitzer Strasse 38, 01187 Dresden, Germany
Interests: strongly correlated quantum systems; non-equilibrium quantum systems; machine learning for electronic structure calculations; reduced density matrix functional theory

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

In physics, symmetry is synonymous with conservation law. This term refers to one or more quantities that remain unchanged during the evolution of a system and is applied to every area of Physics to denote fixed points in a discovery. For this reason, the search for symmetries in Physics represents a crucial point in the understanding of established theories, and their breaking sometimes involves a clue to the search for new theories. Other times, what we want to measure is precisely the asymmetries as variations due to changes affecting physical systems. From micro to macro, in theory or experimentally, this intimate relationship between Physics and symmetry represents the very soul of nature, and in this Special Issue, we will treat it from different points of view.

Dr. Luigi Cimmino
Dr. Carlos L. Benavides-Riveros
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Symmetry is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • symmetric process
  • symmetry breaking
  • conservation law
  • measurement process
  • phenomenological model

Published Papers (1 paper)

Order results
Result details
Select all
Export citation of selected articles as:

Research

22 pages, 375 KiB  
Article
Anisotropy and Asymptotic Degeneracy of the Physical-Hilbert-Space Inner-Product Metrics in an Exactly Solvable Unitary Quantum Model
by Miloslav Znojil
Symmetry 2024, 16(3), 353; https://doi.org/10.3390/sym16030353 - 14 Mar 2024
Cited by 1 | Viewed by 378
Abstract
A unitary-evolution process leading to an ultimate collapse and to a complete loss of observability alias quantum phase transition is studied. A specific solvable Nstate model is considered, characterized by a non-stationary non-Hermitian Hamiltonian. Our analysis uses quantum mechanics formulated in [...] Read more.
A unitary-evolution process leading to an ultimate collapse and to a complete loss of observability alias quantum phase transition is studied. A specific solvable Nstate model is considered, characterized by a non-stationary non-Hermitian Hamiltonian. Our analysis uses quantum mechanics formulated in Schrödinger picture in which, in principle, only the knowledge of a complete set of observables (i.e., operators Λj) enables one to guarantee the uniqueness of the related physical Hilbert space (i.e., of its inner-product metric Θ). Nevertheless, for the sake of simplicity, we only assume the knowledge of just a single input observable (viz., of the energy-representing Hamiltonian HΛ1). Then, out of all of the eligible and Hamiltonian-dependent “Hermitizing” inner-product metrics Θ=Θ(H), we pick up just the simplest possible candidate. Naturally, this slightly restricts the scope of the theory, but in our present model, such a restriction is more than compensated for by the possibility of an alternative, phenomenologically better motivated constraint by which the time-dependence of the metric is required to be smooth. This opens a new model-building freedom which, in fact, enables us to force the system to reach the collapse, i.e., a genuine quantum catastrophe as a result of the mere conventional, strictly unitary evolution. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue The Benefits That Physics Derives from the Concept of Symmetry)
Show Figures

Figure 1

Back to TopTop