Comment on "Deformations, relaxation and broken symmetries in liquids, solids and glasses: a unified topological field theory"

Abstract

We discuss a field-theoretical approach to liquids, solids and glasses, published recently [Phys.Rev.E {\bf105}, 034108 (2022)], which aims to describe these materials in a common quantum formalism. We argue that such quantum formalism is not applicable to classical liquids, and the results presented, which rely heavily on the concept of phase relaxation borrowed from quantum fluids, contradict the known hydrodynamic theory of classical liquids. In particular, the authors miss the important particle-number conservation law and the density fluctuations as hydrodynamic slow variable. Instead, the authors invoke Goldstone bosons as elementary hydrodynamic excitations. We point out that in a classical liquid there are no broken continuous symmetries and consequently no Goldstone bosons. The authors claim that the Goldstone bosons would be responsible for the existence of sound in liquids, instead of resulting from combined particle-number and momentum conservation, a fact well documented in fluid-mechanics textbooks.