Restricted Weyl symmetry and spontaneous symmetry breakdown of conformal symmetry

Abstract

In this paper, we elucidate the relation between the restricted Weyl symmetry and spontaneous symmetry breakdown of conformal symmetry. Using a scalar–tensor gravity, we show that the restricted Weyl symmetry leads to spontaneous symmetry breakdown of a global scale symmetry when the vacuum expectation value of a scalar field takes a nonzero value. It is then shown that this spontaneous symmetry breakdown induces spontaneous symmetry breakdown of special conformal symmetry in a flat Minkowski spacetime, but the resultant Nambu–Goldstone boson is not an independent physical mode but expressed in terms of the derivative of the dilaton which is the Nambu–Goldstone boson of the global scale symmetry. In other words, the theories which are invariant under the general coordinate transformation and the restricted Weyl transformation exhibit a Nambu–Goldstone phase where both special conformal transformation and dilatation are spontaneously broken while preserving the Poincaré symmetry.