Cascading Multicriticality in Nonrelativistic Spontaneous Symmetry Breaking

Abstract

Without Lorentz invariance, spontaneous global symmetry breaking can lead to multicritical Nambu-Goldstone modes with a higher-order low-energy dispersion $ω\sim k^n$ ($n=2,3,\ldots$), whose naturalness is protected by polynomial shift symmetries. Here we investigate the role of infrared divergences and the nonrelativistic generalization of the Coleman-Hohenberg-Mermin-Wagner (CHMW) theorem. We find novel cascading phenomena with large hierarchies between the scales at which the value of $n$ changes, leading to an evasion of the "no-go" consequences of the relativistic CHMW theorem.

5 pages, 1 figure