spontaneous symmetry breaking


spontaneous symmetry breaking

[spän′tā·nē·əs ′sim·ə·trē ‚brāk·iŋ] (physics) A situation in which the solution of a set of physical equations fails to exhibit a symmetry possessed by the equations themselves; an example is a magnet, in which the underlying equations describing the metal do not distinguish any direction of space from any other, but the magnet certainly does, since it points in some definite direction.