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Spontaneous symmetry breaking occurs when the action and equations have a symmetry but a chosen ground state is invariant only under a proper subgroup. Acting with the broken symmetry generates a degenerate vacuum manifold.
Spontaneous symmetry breaking is a phenomenon that occurs in various fields of physics, particularly in condensed matter physics, particle physics, and cosmology. It describes a situation in which a system that is symmetric under some transformation settles into an asymmetrical state. Despite the underlying laws or equations being symmetric, the actual observed state of the system does not exhibit this symmetry.