Science Highlight - Individual entities are symmetric when the system as a whole is not

Physics

Individual entities are symmetric when the system as a whole is not

Recent theoretical work shows a new way of symmetry breaking

New findings displayed that when individual entities interact, even though at first they will behave differently, if you make them a little different from each other they will return to behave identically again.  The experiment set up displayed the possibility of converse symmetry relative to traditional models of symmetry breaking. Symmetry breaking is the phenomenon in which the symmetry of a system breaks due to individual arbitrary fluctuations. Northwestern's Adilson Motter led the tests using a system of alternating-current electromechanical oscillators. Results showed that their collective ability to achieve identical frequency synchronization is better when the oscillators are tuned to be suitably non-identical. This discovery of converse symmetry breaking being present in some situations can be applied to a range of systems such as optimizing large power grid systems or even when understanding human conformity.

Molnar, F., Nishikawa, T. & Motter, A.E. Network experiment demonstrates converse symmetry breaking. Nat. Phys. (January 2020) https://www.nature.com/articles/s41567-019-0742-y#citeas