Physics (Internal)

Chiral critical matter

This event is part of the Physics Department Colloquia Series.

I will take the audience on a bit of a rollercoaster ride, pedagogically discussing a recently discovered exotic liquid crystal state, the heliconical nematic, that emerges as a result of a spontaneous chiral symmetry breaking, a holy grail dating back to Louis Pasteur. I will also explain how low-energy physics of this and related states of matter can be understood as an emergent Higgs mechanism, with critical fluctuations extending throughout the low-temperature phase.