I had a very unusual dream on the night of 5 January this year. In that dream, I saw my role model, my inspiration, Prof. Yoichiro Nambu.
The first time I came to know about Nambu was in December 2008. I was browsing through the December issue of Science Reporter (I still have that copy) and I came across an article discussing the work of 2008 Nobel Prize winners in physics. He was awarded the the prize for his work on the discovery of the mechanism of 'Spontaneous Symmetry Breaking (SSB)'. I was immediately captivated by my newfound knowledge and Nambu became my primary motivation for choosing particle physics over any other discipline. I developed an unusual fondness with SSB and I had to wait for a little over five years to understand it and its implications in a coherent way. The reason for the delay was the advanced mathematics and physics required to understand the richness of this phenomena.
My opportunity came during January-May 2014, when I had to do a six credit project as a part of the coursework. I chose this topic for my project because I wanted to understand the physics behind the phenomena which had kept me fixated for the last five years. This phenomena is ubiquitous in physics and has been at the heart of modern developments in particle physics. Every time I revisit SSB, I learn something new and to this day I am learning something about it. My suspicion is that it also manifests itself in humanities and other sister disciplines. It could surely find some application in economics where it could be used to describe some macroscopic phenomena by hiding all the messiness with its impeccable neatness.
During the course of the project, I came across two different terms — 'Dynamical Symmetry Breaking (DSB)' and 'Spontaneous Symmetry Breaking (SSB)'. The literature is very ambiguous with the usage of these terms and people use it interchangeably at times. However, at certain places some subtle differences have been pointed out. Nambu's own view on this was that every symmetry breaking is dynamical in nature and the terms can be used interchangeably.
So, back to the dream ! In my dream, I asked him — "Is there any fundamental difference between SSB and DSB or the terms can be used interchangeably?".
He smiled at me at said — "We will take this up later !"
