Local Strong-to-Weak Spontaneous Symmetry Breaking
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Quantum Physics arXiv:2605.28967 (quant-ph) [Submitted on 27 May 2026] Title:Local Strong-to-Weak Spontaneous Symmetry Breaking Authors:Francisco Divi, Leonardo A. Lessa, Chong Wang View a PDF of the paper titled Local Strong-to-Weak Spontaneous Symmetry Breaking, by Francisco Divi and 2 other authors View PDF Abstract:We propose a local notion of strong-to-weak spontaneous symmetry breaking (SW-SSB), through a local one-point fidelity correlator. Compared with the previous definition in terms of a two-point fidelity correlator, our local formulation offers two key advantages: (1) it is easier to detect in large systems: for a system of size $N$ and with ${\rm poly}(N)$ amount of resources, one can detect the local fidelity order up to volume scale $O(\log(N))$; and (2) the local SW-SSB order remains well defined in the thermodynamic limit, where the density matrix itself is not well defined. We show that key features of SW-SSB, including stability under finite-depth symmetric channels and long-range conditional mutual information, persist within this local framework. Our definition is conceptually analogous to local thermalization, as exemplified by pure states obeying the eigenstate thermalization hypothesis (ETH). For critical states, the local one-point fidelity correlator defines an interesting class of defect problems. We demonstrate the applicability of the local formulation through several concrete examples, and derive the universal scaling behavior of the local fidelity correlator in a range of critical systems, including ground states of conformal field theories as well as ballistic and diffusive free-fermion metals. Comments: Subjects: Quantum Physics (quant-ph); Statistical Mechanics (cond-mat.stat-mech); Strongly Correlated Electrons (cond-mat.str-el) Cite as: arXiv:2605.28967 [quant-ph] (or arXiv:2605.28967v1 [quant-ph] for this version) https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2605.28967 Focus to learn more arXiv-issued DOI via DataCite (pending registration) Submission history From: Francisco Divi [view email] [v1] Wed, 27 May 2026 18:16:15 UTC (785 KB) Full-text links: Access Paper: View a PDF of the paper titled Local Strong-to-Weak Spontaneous Symmetry Breaking, by Francisco Divi and 2 other authorsView PDFTeX Source view license Current browse context: quant-ph new | recent | 2026-05 Change to browse by: cond-mat cond-mat.stat-mech cond-mat.str-el References & Citations INSPIRE HEP NASA ADSGoogle Scholar Semantic Scholar export BibTeX citation Loading... BibTeX formatted citation × loading... Data provided by: Bookmark Bibliographic Tools Bibliographic and Citation Tools Bibliographic Explorer Toggle Bibliographic Explorer (What is the Explorer?) Connected Papers Toggle Connected Papers (What is Connected Papers?) Litmaps Toggle Litmaps (What is Litmaps?) scite.ai Toggle scite Smart Citations (What are Smart Citations?) Code, Data, Media Code, Data and Media Associated with this Article alphaXiv Toggle alphaXiv (What is alphaXiv?) Links to Code Toggle CatalyzeX Code Finder for Papers (What is CatalyzeX?) DagsHub Toggle DagsHub (What is DagsHub?) GotitPub Toggle Gotit.pub (What is GotitPub?) Huggingface Toggle Hugging Face (What is Huggingface?) ScienceCast Toggle ScienceCast (What is ScienceCast?) Demos Demos Replicate Toggle Replicate (What is Replicate?) Spaces Toggle Hugging Face Spaces (What is Spaces?) Spaces Toggle TXYZ.AI (What is TXYZ.AI?) Related Papers Recommenders and Search Tools Link to Influence Flower Influence Flower (What are Influence Flowers?) Core recommender toggle CORE Recommender (What is CORE?) Author Venue Institution Topic About arXivLabs arXivLabs: experimental projects with community collaborators arXivLabs is a framework that allows collaborators to develop and share new arXiv features directly on our website. Both individuals and organizations that work with arXivLabs have embraced and accepted our values of openness, community, excellence, and user data privacy. arXiv is committed to these values and only works with partners that adhere to them. Have an idea for a project that will add value for arXiv's community? Learn more about arXivLabs. Which authors of this paper are endorsers? | Disable MathJax (What is MathJax?)