The breaking of global continuous symmetries in two-dimensional flat spacetime and in four-dimensional de Sitter spacetime is investigated. Infrared divergences require physically allowable quantum states in these spaces to break Lorentz or de Sitter invariance, resulting in two-point functions which are explicitly time dependent. Field expectation values which break the global symmetry must decay in time, but it is possible to have a state which exhibits broken symmetry for a finite time. It is also possible for field correlations and energy density produced by a broken-symmetry state to persist after the symmetry has been restored.

• Received 3 January 1986

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevD.33.2833