Quasidynamical symmetry in an interacting boson model phase transition.

The apparent persistence of symmetry in the face of strong symmetry-breaking interactions is examined in a many-boson model. The model exhibits a transition between two phases associated with U(5) and O(6) symmetries, respectively, as the value of a control parameter progresses from 0 to 1. The remarkable fact is that, in spite of strong mixing of the symmetries for intermediate values of the control parameter, the model continues to exhibit the characteristics of its closest symmetry limit for all but a relatively narrow transition region that becomes progressively narrower as the boson number increases. This phenomenon is explained in terms of quasidynamical symmetry.