Speaker: Yi-Zhuang You (UC San Diego)

Title: Symmetric Mass Generation

Abstract: Mass is a fundamental physical property of matter. The Higgs mechanism is a standard framework to explain the origin of mass from symmetry breaking. However, it is recently realized that there are also physical mechanisms to generate mass for fermions without symmetry breaking by non-perturbative interaction effects. Symmetric mass generation is a novel mechanism that can occur when the fermion system is free from any quantum anomaly. In this talk, I will introduce the recent research progress of symmetric mass generation in condensed matter and high-energy physics systems, including twisted-bilayer graphene and the Standard Model, making connections to fermionic symmetry-protected topological phases, deconfined quantum critical points, lattice regularization of chiral fermions, pseudo-gap physics, and generalized Luttinger theorems.