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I am trying to make an analogy between the spontaneous symmetry breaking occurring in magnetism and that of superconducvity, but I am struggling to make it precise.

In magnetism, we know that interactions are aligning the directions of all spins in the system, thus the system has a single magnetic orientation. The hamiltonian we can use to describe such a mechanism is of the form

$$ H = - J \sum_{i,j} \vec{S_i} \cdot \vec{S_j} $$ In superconductivity, the phase of the system is said to be uniform. Can we think of the superconductivity interaction as a "phase aligning" mechanism? If so, can this be understood within BCS theory? And as a side question, what do we mean exactly when we say that the "phase" of the electrons is uniform?

user140255
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  • In addition to many tries to explain the U(1) symmetry breaking on this website, as e.g. https://physics.stackexchange.com/q/284377/16689 https://physics.stackexchange.com/q/323508/16689 https://physics.stackexchange.com/q/306515/16689 https://physics.stackexchange.com/q/272762/16689 https://physics.stackexchange.com/q/105538/16689 https://physics.stackexchange.com/q/44565/16689 https://physics.stackexchange.com/q/58069/16689, you may find this Wikipedia page interesting – FraSchelle Jan 16 '18 at 02:47
  • Also here : https://physics.stackexchange.com/q/133780/16689 – FraSchelle Jan 16 '18 at 03:05

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