broken symmetry
Quick Summary
In physics, broken symmetry refers to a situation where a system's underlying laws possess symmetry, but the system's actual state does not. This means that while the fundamental rules are the same in all directions or under certain transformations, the observed outcome or configuration exhibits a preference, breaking that uniformity.1
A key example is the Higgs mechanism, which explains how the electroweak force's symmetry is broken at low energies, giving mass to particles like the W and Z bosons. Another significant area is the matter-antimatter asymmetry in the universe. While fundamental laws might treat matter and antimatter symmetrically, the observable universe is overwhelmingly composed of matter. This imbalance is thought to stem from processes in the early universe, possibly involving CP violation, where matter and antimatter behaved slightly differently. Supersymmetry is a theoretical framework that proposes a symmetry between fermions and bosons, suggesting that known particles have undiscovered "superpartners".234
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