Nonlinear Science & Mathematical Physics - Time Crystals

Series
Other Talks
Time
Wednesday, November 13, 2013 - 3:00pm for 1 hour (actually 50 minutes)
Location
Howey N110
Speaker
Al Shapere – University of Kentucky
Organizer

Please Note: Host: Dan Goldman, Physics

I introduce a class of dynamical systems which exhibit motion in their lowest-energy states and thus spontaneously break time-translation symmetry. Their Lagrangians have nonstandard kinetic terms and their Hamiltonians are multivalued functions of momentum, yet they are perfectly consistent and amenable to quantization. Possible applications to condensed matter systems and cosmology will be discussed.