Questions tagged [duality]
The duality tag has no usage guidance.
248
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Is the wave-particle duality a real duality?
I often hear about the wave-particle duality, and how particles exhibit properties of both particles and waves. However, I wonder, is this actually a duality? At the most fundamental level, we 'know' ...
- 1,503
48
votes
6
answers
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Why do lasers cut? Is this a case of light acting as matter?
All I found in Google was very broad. From a physics models perspective, why can photons emitted from a laser cut? Does this cut mean that the photons are acting like matter?
- 591
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2
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What's the intuition behind the Choi-Jamiolkowski isomorphism?
What is the intuition behind the Choi-Jamiolkowski isomorphism? It says that with every superoperator $\mathbb{E}$ we can associate a state given by a density matrix
$$ J(\mathbb{E}) = (\mathbb{E} \...
- 2,835
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votes
2
answers
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Confusion about duality transformation in 1+1D Ising model in a transverse field
In 1+1D Ising model with a transverse field defined by the Hamiltonian
\begin{equation}
H(J,h)=-J\sum_i\sigma^z_i\sigma_{i+1}^z-h\sum_i\sigma_i^x
\end{equation}
There is a duality transformation which ...
- 1,566
25
votes
1
answer
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"S-duality" between confinement and the Higgs mechanism?
I feel picked by the second to last sentence in this answer to a question about what would happen if EM and QCD were spontaneously broken, which says
"In fact, there is a sense in theoretical ...
- 9,581
21
votes
5
answers
2k
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Is quantum mechanics intrinsically dualistic?
In just about every interpretation of quantum mechanics, there appears to be some form of dualism. Is this inevitable or not?
In the orthodox Copenhagen interpretation by Bohr and Heisenberg, the ...
- 227
19
votes
3
answers
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Paper listing known Seiberg-dual pairs of ${\cal N}=1$ gauge theories
Is there a nice list of known Seiberg-dual pairs somewhere? There are so many papers from the middle 1990s but I do not find comprehensive review. Could you suggest a reference?
Seiberg's original ...
- 3,612
18
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4
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What is intuitively the Hodge dual of a $p$-form?
Carroll in his textbook "Spacetime and geometry" defines the Hodge dual of a $p$-form $A$ on an $n$-dimensional manifold as $$(\star A)_{\mu_1...\mu_{n-p}}=\dfrac{1}{p!}\epsilon^{\nu_1...\nu_p} _{\ \ \...
- 7,720
16
votes
2
answers
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Compact or non-compact boson from bosonization?
In some discussions of bosonization, it is stressed that the duality between free bosons and free fermions requires the use of a compact boson. For example, in a review article by Senechal, the ...
- 3,098
15
votes
1
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Realization of: CFT generating function = AdS partition function
An important aspect of the AdS/CFT correspondence is the recipe to compute correlation functions of a boundary operator $\mathcal{O} $ in terms of the supergravity fields in the interior of the $AdS_{...
physics
13
votes
1
answer
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Local Fermionic Symmetry
That is perhaps a bit of an advertisement, but a couple of collaborators and myself just sent out a paper, and one of the results there is a little bit surprising. We found (in section 6E) a fermionic ...
user566
12
votes
3
answers
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Symmetry in electricity and magnetism due to magnetic monopoles
I was wondering about the differences between electricity and magnetism in the context of Maxwell's equations. When I thought over it, I came to the conclusion that the only difference between the two ...
- 2,918
12
votes
2
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902
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Is the U(1) gauge theory in 2+1D dual to a U(1) or an integer XY model?
The compact U(1) lattice gauge theory is described by the action
$$S_0=-\frac{1}{g^2}\sum_\square \cos\left(\sum_{l\in\partial \square}A_l\right),$$
where the gauge connection $A_l\in$U(1) is defined ...
- 11.9k
12
votes
0
answers
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Intuition for Homological Mirror Symmetry
first of all, I need to confess my ignorance concerning physics since I'm a mathematician. I'm interested in the physical intuition of the Langlands program, therefore I need to understand what ...
- 1,043
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4
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Why does gravity seem to have two natures (force or warping of space and time)?
In classical mechanics, gravity is regarded as a force but in general relativity it's a warping of space and time in presence of mass. Are these two definitions the same? Or is this a duality nature ...
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