  We examine the conditions for appearance of symmetry breaking bifurcation in
damped and periodically driven pendulum in the case of strong damping. We show
that symmetry breaking, unlike other nonlinear phenomena, can exist at high
dissipation. We prove that symmetry breaking phases exist between phases of
symmetric normal and symmetric inverted oscillations. We find that symmetry
broken solutions occupy a sufficiently smaller region of pendulum's parameter
space in comparison to the statements made in earlier considerations [McDonald
and Plischke, Phys. Rev. B 27 (1983) 201]. Our research on symmetry breaking in
a strongly damped pendulum is relevant to an understanding of phenomena of
dynamic symmetry breaking and rectification in a pure ac driven semiconductor
superlattices.
