Eur. Phys. J. C (2017) 77: 783
https://doi.org/10.1140/epjc/s10052-017-5355-y

Regular Article - Theoretical Physics

Symmetric configurations highlighted by collective quantum coherence

¹ Institute for Mathematics, Astrophysics and Particle Physics, Radboud University, Heyendaalseweg 135, 6525 AJ, Nijmegen, The Netherlands
² Yukawa Institute for Theoretical Physics, Kyoto University, Kitashirakawa, Sakyo-ku, Kyoto, 606-8502, Japan

^* e-mail: dobster@science.ru.nl

Received: 17 April 2017
Accepted: 4 November 2017
Published online: 20 November 2017

Abstract

Recent developments in quantum gravity have shown the Lorentzian treatment to be a fruitful approach towards the emergence of macroscopic space-times. In this paper, we discuss another related aspect of the Lorentzian treatment: we argue that collective quantum coherence may provide a simple mechanism for highlighting symmetric configurations over generic non-symmetric ones. After presenting the general framework of the mechanism, we show the phenomenon in some concrete simple examples in the randomly connected tensor network, which is tightly related to a certain model of quantum gravity, i.e., the canonical tensor model. We find large peaks at configurations invariant under Lie-group symmetries as well as a preference for charge quantization, even in the Abelian case. In future study, this simple mechanism may provide a way to analyze the emergence of macroscopic space-times with global symmetries as well as various other symmetries existing in nature, which are usually postulated.