2001/09/14 by Xiao-Gang Wen · 1 voice · 70 citations
Physics and Astronomy · #Boson #Cold Atom Physics and Bose-Einstein Condensates #Degrees of freedom (physics and chemistry) #Gauge boson #Gauge theory #Lattice gauge theory #Massless particle #Physics #Physics of Superconductivity and Magnetism #Quantum #Quantum fluctuation #Quantum many-body systems #Quantum mechanics #Theoretical physics #cond-mat #hep-th
paper · pdf · doi:10.1103/physrevlett.88.011602
published in Physical Review Letters 88(1), 011602 (American Physical Society) · 4 pages, RevTeX4, Homepage: http://dao.mit.edu/~wen
arxiv published 2001/09/14 · arxiv created 2001/09/20 · arxiv updated 2001/09/20 · openalex publication_date 2001/12/19 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05
The existence of light [a massless U(1) gauge boson] is one of the unresolved mysteries in nature. We propose that light is originated from certain quantum orders in our vacuum. We construct quantum spin models on lattice to demonstrate that some quantum orders can give rise to light without breaking any symmetries and without any fine-tuning. Through our models, we show that the existence of light can simply be a phenomenon of quantum coherence in a system with many degrees of freedom. Massless gauge fluctuations appear commonly and naturally in strongly correlated quantum systems which originally contain no gauge fields.