Symmetric Mass Generation, Topological Phases and Lattice Chiral Gauge Theories: May 20-24, 2024

ScheduleParticipant ListView Videos

Organized by:

  • Simon Catterall (Syracuse)
  • Juven Wang (CMSA, Harvard)
  • Yi-Zhuang You (UCSD)
  • David Tong (DAMTP, Cambridge)

The most common mechanism for generating fermion masses arises when scalar fields acquire vacuum expectation values in theories with Yukawa interactions. Such a mechanism is necessarily associated with the spontaneous breaking of symmetries. However, recent work in both the condensed matter and high-energy physics communities has shown that this is not the only possibility — in certain theories, fermions can acquire masses without breaking chiral symmetries. Examples of such symmetric mass generation can be found in gapped boundary states of topological superconductors and observations of massive symmetric phases in staggered lattice fermions. The key constraint that allows such a mechanism to operate is the cancellation of all ‘t Hooft anomalies, both perturbative local and non-perturbative global anomalies in the theory. In the context of lattice gauge theories, this has led to renewed hope that it should be possible to construct classes of anomaly-free chiral lattice fermion theories using mirror models. There is also a growing interest in understanding the nature of the gap-opening transition and the unique signature that characterizes the symmetric gapped phase. Other possible applications and future directions of symmetric mass generation include supersymmetric or non supersymmetric duality, the flavor hierarchy problem, the strong CP problem, and applications to gapping the Fermi surfaces in strongly correlated electron systems.

Talk Schedule


Time Title Speaker Location
8:30am Breakfast N/A SCGP Cafe
9:30am Chiral Gauge Theory at the Boundary between Topological Phases David Kaplan SCGP 103
10:30am Coffee Break N/A SCGP Cafe
11:00am Conserved currents in five-dimensional proposals for lattice chiral gauge theories Yigal Shamir SCGP 103
11:30am Propagator zeros and lattice chiral gauge theories Maarten Golterman SCGP 103
12:00pm Lunch N/A SCGP Cafe
1:30pm Non-invertible and chiral symmetries Shu-Heng Shao SCGP 103
2:30pm Weyl fermions on a finite lattice Srimoyee Sen SCGP 103
3:30pm Tea Time N/A SCGP Cafe
4:00pm Boundaries, Anomalies, Scattering Diego Delmastro SCGP 103

Time Title Speaker Location
8:30am Breakfast N/A SCGP Cafe
9:30am Various aspects of symmetric mass generation Cenke Xu SCGP 103
10:30am Coffee Break N/A SCGP Cafe
11:00am Tensor networks for lattice field theory Gertian Roose SCGP 103
11:30am Tensor networks for generalized symmetries, duality and chiral fermions Laurens Lootens SCGP 103
12:00pm Group Photo N/A SCGP Lobby
12:00pm Lunch N/A SCGP Cafe
1:30pm Generalized lattice gauging Dachuan Lu SCGP 103
2:00pm Gauge response of Green’s function zeros Yi-Zhuang You SCGP 103
2:30pm Three approaches to chiral fermion problem via mirror fermions: composite fermion, anomaly, and non-linear sigma model Xiao-Gang Wen SCGP 103
3:30pm Tea Time N/A SCGP Cafe
4:00pm Workshop Discussion Session N/A SCGP 103

Time Title Speaker Location
8:30am Breakfast N/A SCGP Cafe
9:30am Exact lattice anomalies and SMG for Kaehler-Dirac fermions Simon Catterall SCGP 103
10:30am Coffee Break N/A SCGP Cafe
11:00am Phase structure of 8 flavor SU(3) gauge theory Anna Hasenfratz SCGP 103
11:30am SMG in four dimensional staggered fermion models Nouman Butt SCGP 103/ZOOM
12:00pm Lunch N/A SCGP Cafe
1:30pm Generation Puzzle (3= 48/16 = 45/15 = 24/8) and Strong CP Puzzle Juven Wang SCGP 103
2:30pm SMG=MG Phillip Boyle Smith SCGP 103
3:30pm Tea Time N/A SCGP Cafe
4:00pm The integrability of chiral determinant in anomaly-free chiral lattice gauge theories Yoshio Kikukawa SCGP 103
6:00pm Banquet Dinner N/A SCGP Cafe

Time Title Speaker Location
8:30am Breakfast N/A SCGP Cafe
9:30am Modified Villain Hamiltonians and Lattice Chern-Simons Theory Theo Jacobson SCGP 103
10:30am Coffee Break N/A SCGP Cafe
11:00am Exact lattice chiral symmetry in 2d gauge theory Aleksey Cherman SCGP 103
12:00pm Lunch N/A SCGP Cafe
1:30pm Fermionic anomalies on the lattice: the Ginsparg-Wilson relation and its generalizations Hersh Singh SCGP 103
2:30pm Conformally Symmetric Views from a Fuzzy Sphere Emily Huffman SCGP 103
3:30pm Tea Time N/A SCGP Cafe
4:00pm Monopole-fermion scattering and flavor hierarchy Yuta Hamada SCGP 103

Time Title Speaker Location
8:30am Breakfast N/A SCGP Cafe
9:30am Generalized Global Symmetries and Nonperturbative Quantum Flavodynamics Seth Koren SCGP 103
10:30am Coffee Break N/A SCGP Cafe
11:00am Chirality changing RG flows: dynamics and models Yuri Shirman SCGP 103
12:00pm Lunch N/A SCGP Cafe