broken symmetry?

[abskebabs]

Hello everybody. I'm a 2nd year undergraduate in Theoretical Physics, and I have to write a 2000 word essay on an area of physics, or something physics related. I am currently undecided on what to do, and I have 2 weeks left in which to do this work.

 

I have come across the theory of broken symmetry, but do not know much about it, and the article on wikipedia is especially brief. I am considering whter to do my essay on it, but would like to find out more about it first. Does anyone know any good introductory sources?

 

My essay is not required to be especially rigorous, I am just required to have a reasonable grasp of what I am talking about and most of the marks will go towards getting the right "style" for a scientific essay.

 

In light of this, would broken symmetry be an unsuitable subject due to its complexity? If I am to research it, are there any areas of mathematics I should brush up on first before diving in?

 

Assistance with regard to this matter would be greatly appreciated.

[timo]

Perhaps you should aim at symmetry in physics rather than symmetry breaking. Sounds like a prequisite anyways, so you can still cover a bit of symmetry breaking if you really want to.

[Severian]

You could divide your symmetry breaking into explicit and spontaneous symmetry breaking. Then you have http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spontaneous_symmetry_breaking to fall back on two.

 

Notice that there are lots of different sponstaneous symmetry breaking phenomena in physics (look at 'example' in the link and the pages it links to) so you could describe each of these in turn, emphasising the different features.

 

One of the most interesting examples, in my biased view is electroweak symmetry breaking and the Higgs mechanism: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electroweak_symmetry_breaking