BCS, Nambu–Jona-Lasinio, and Han–Nambu: A sketch of Nambu's works in 1960–1965

Abstract

The years of 1960-1965 were a remarkable period for Yoichiro Nambu. Starting with a reformulation of BCS theory with emphasis on gauge invariance, he recognized the realization of spontaneous chiral symmetry breaking in particle physics as is evidenced by the Goldberger-Treiman relation. A concrete model of Nambu and Jona-Lasinio illustrated the essence of the Nambu-Goldstone theorem and the idea of soft pions. After the proposal of the quark model by Gell-Mann, he together with Han constructed an alternative model of integrally charged quarks with possible non-Abelian gluons. All those remarkable works were performed during the years 1960-1965. Here I briefly review those works following the original papers of Nambu chronologically, together with a brief introduction to a formulation of Neother's theorem and Ward-Takahashi identities using path integrals. This article is mostly based on a lecture given at the Nambu Memorial Symposium held at Osaka City University in September 2015, where Nambu started his professional career.