Published September 2, 2024 | Version Published
Journal Article Open

Composite subsystem symmetries and decoration of sub-dimensional excitations

  • 1. ROR icon California Institute of Technology
  • 2. ROR icon Institute for Advanced Study

Abstract

Flux binding is a mechanism that is well-understood for global symmetries. Given two systems, each with a global symmetry, gauging the composite symmetry instead of individual symmetries corresponds to the condensation of the composite of gauge charges belonging to individually gauged theories and the binding of the gauge fluxes. The composite charge that is condensed is created by a ``short'' string given by the new minimal coupling corresponding to the composite symmetry. This paper studies what happens when combined subsystem symmetries are gauged, especially when the component charges and fluxes have different sub-dimensional mobilities. We investigate 3+1D systems with planar symmetries where, for example, the planar symmetry of a planon charge is combined with one of the planar symmetries of a fracton charge. We propose the principle of Remote Detectability to determine how the fluxes bind and potentially change their mobility. This understanding can then be used to design fracton models with sub-dimensional excitations that are decorated with excitations having nontrivial statistics or non-Abelian fusion rules.

Copyright and License

Copyright A. Vadali et al. This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Published by the SciPost Foundation.

Acknowledgement

We are indebted to inspiring discussions with Xiuqi Ma.

Funding

Funding information A.V. is supported by the Ernest R. Roberts SURF fellowship. A.D., Z.W., and X.C. are supported by the National Science Foundation under award number DMR1654340, the Simons collaboration on “Ultra-Quantum Matter” (grant number 651438), the Simons Investigator Award (award ID 828078) and the Institute for Quantum Information and Matter at Caltech. W.S. acknowledges support from the Simons collaboration on “UltraQuantum Matter” (grant number 651444). X.C. is also supported by the Walter Burke Institute for Theoretical Physics at Caltech.

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Additional details

Funding

Institute for Quantum Information and Matter, California Institute of Technology
National Science Foundation
DMR-1654340
Simons Foundation
Ultra-Quantum Matter 651438
Simons Foundation
651444
Simons Foundation
Investigator Award 828078
Walter Burke Institute for Theoretical Physics

Dates

Accepted
2024-08-15
Accepted
Available
2024-09-02
First published

Caltech Custom Metadata

Caltech groups
Physics Department
Publication Status
Published