Quantum Matter Seminar

Recent years have seen a renaissance in the study of symmetries in many-body physics and field theory. Perhaps the simplest of the novel symmetries that have attracted interest are those that lead to the conservation of multipole moments of a conserved charge, in addition to the charge itself. I will describe a set of results on what happens when dipole conservation is imposed on classical many-particle mechanics. These include novel kinetic energy terms, weakly nonextensive statistical mechanics, a breakdown of ergodicity, and a generic arrow of time. Time permitting, I will comment on our current understanding of the quantized versions of these systems.