Abstract
The order parameter of a finite system with a spontaneously broken continuous global symmetry acts as a quantum mechanical rotor. Both antiferromagnets with a spontaneously broken spin symmetry and massless QCD with a broken chiral symmetry have rotor spectra when considered in a finite volume. When an electron or hole is doped into an antiferromagnet or when a nucleon is propagating through the QCD vacuum, a Berry phase arises from a monopole field and the angular momentum of the rotor is quantized in half-integer units.
- Received 21 December 2006
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevD.78.077901
©2008 American Physical Society