The Mexican hat potential is one that elicits spontaneous symmetry breaking (SSB), a process by which a physical system starting in a symmetric state spontaneously enters and remains in an asymmetric state. This usually applies to systems whose equations of motion obey a set of symmetries while the lowest-energy state(s) do(es) not. When the system assumes one of its ground states, its symmetry is broken even though the Lagrangian as a whole retains it. https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Spontaneous_symmetry_breaking
See https://tikz.netlify.app/higgs-potential for a very similar image.
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% The Mexican hat potential is one that elicits spontaneous symmetry breaking (SSB), a process by which a physical system starting in a symmetric state spontaneously enters and remains in an asymmetric state. This usually applies to systems whose equations of motion obey a set of symmetries while the lowest-energy state(s) do(es) not. When the system assumes one of its ground states, its symmetry is broken even though the Lagrangian as a whole retains it. https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Spontaneous_symmetry_breaking% See https://tikz.netlify.app/higgs-potential for a very similar image.\documentclass[svgnames]{standalone}\usepackage{pgfplots}\pgfplotsset{compat=1.8}\usetikzlibrary{arrows.meta}\begin{document}\begin{tikzpicture}[font=\footnotesize]\begin{axis}[axis lines=center,axis equal,domain=0:360,y domain=0:1.25,y axis line style=stealth-,y label style={at={(0.35,0.18)}},xmax=1.6,zmax=1.3,xlabel = $\varphi_{_1}$,ylabel=$\varphi_{_2}$,zlabel=$U_k(\rho)$,ticks=none]\addplot3 [surf,shader=flat,draw=black,fill=white,z buffer=sort] ({sin(x)*y}, {cos(x)*y}, {(y^2-1)^2});\coordinate (center) at (axis cs:0,0,1);\coordinate (minimum) at (axis cs:{cos(30)},{sin(30)},0);\end{axis}\fill[DarkBlue] (center) circle (0.1);\fill[DarkRed] (minimum) circle (0.1);\draw (center) edge[shorten <=5,shorten >=5,out=-10,in=150,double,draw=gray,double distance=0.5,-{>[length=2,line width=0.5]}] (minimum);\end{tikzpicture}\end{document}
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