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arXiv:2002.12026

Fractonic order and emergent fermionic gauge theory

Wilbur E. Shirley

Published Feb 27, 2020• 15 citations
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Abstract

We consider fermionic systems in which fermion parity is conserved within rigid subsystems, and describe an explicit procedure for gauging such subsystem fermion parity symmetries to obtain bosonic spin Hamiltonians. We show that gauging planar or fractal subsystem fermion parity symmetry in three spatial dimensions gives rise to a plethora of exactly solvable spin models exhibiting novel gapped fractonic orders characterized by emergent fermionic gauge theory. The low energy excitations of these models include fractional quasiparticles with constrained mobility and emergent fermionic statistics. We illustrate this phenomenon through a series of examples including fermionic analogs of both foliated fracton phases and fractal spin liquids. We find that the foliated analogs actually exhibit the same fractonic order as their bosonic counterparts, while this is not generally the case for fermionic fractal spin liquids.

DOI
10.48550/arxiv.2002.12026

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•Feb 26, 2020•0 citations
We consider fermionic systems in which fermion parity is conserved within rigid subsystems, and describe an explicit procedure for gauging such subsystem fermion parity symmetries to obtain bosonic spin Hamiltonians. We show that gauging planar or fractal subsystem fermion parity symmetry in three spatial dimensions gives rise to a plethora of exactly solvable spin models exhibiting novel gapped fractonic orders characterized by emergent fermionic gauge theory. The low energy excitations of these models include fractional quasiparticles with constrained mobility and emergent fermionic statistics. We illustrate this phenomenon through a series of examples including fermionic analogs of both foliated fracton phases and fractal spin liquids. We find that the foliated analogs actually exhibit the same fractonic order as their bosonic counterparts, while this is not generally the case for fermionic fractal spin liquids.
The Chamon model is an exactly solvable spin Hamiltonian exhibiting nontrivial fracton order. In this paper, we dissect two distinct aspects of the model. First, we show that it exhibits an emergent fractonic gauge theory coupled to a fermionic subsystem symmetry-protected topological state under four stacks of Z2{\mathbb{Z}}_{2}Z2​ planar symmetries. Second, we show that the Chamon model hosts 4-foliated fracton order by describing an entanglement renormalization group transformation that exfoliates four separate stacks of 2D toric codes from the bulk system.
In the study of three-dimensional gapped models, two-dimensional gapped states should be considered as a free resource. This is the basic idea underlying the notion of ``foliated fracton order'' proposed in Shirley et al. [Phys. Rev. X 8, 031051 (2018)]. We have found that many of the known type-I fracton models, although they appear very different, have the same foliated fracton order, known as ``X-cube'' order. In this paper, we identify three-dimensional fracton models with different kinds of foliated fracton order. Whereas the X-cube order corresponds to the gauge theory of a simple paramagnet with subsystem planar symmetry, the different orders correspond to twisted versions of the gauge theory for which the system prior to gauging has nontrivial order protected by the planar subsystem symmetry. We present constructions of the twisted models and demonstrate that they possess nontrivial order by studying their fractional excitation contents.
Based on several previous examples, we summarize explicitly the general procedure to gauge models with subsystem symmetries, which are symmetries with generators that have support within a sub-manifold of the system. The gauging process can be applied to any local quantum model on a lattice that is invariant under the subsystem symmetry. We focus primarily on simple 3D paramagnetic states with planar symmetries. For these systems, the gauged theory may exhibit foliated fracton order and we find that the species of symmetry charges in the paramagnet directly determine the resulting foliated fracton order. Moreover, we find that gauging linear subsystem symmetries in 2D or 3D models results in a self-duality similar to gauging global symmetries in 1D.
We introduce lattice gauge theories which describe three-dimensional, gapped quantum phases exhibiting the phenomenology of both conventional three-dimensional topological orders and fracton orders, starting from a finite group GGG, a choice of an Abelian normal subgroup NNN, and a choice of foliation structure. These hybrid fracton orders, examples of which were introduced in a previous paper [Tantivasadakarn et al., Phys. Rev. B 103, 245136 (2021)], can also host immobile, pointlike excitations that are non-Abelian, and therefore give rise to a protected degeneracy. We construct solvable lattice models for these orders which interpolate between a conventional, three-dimensional GGG gauge theory and a pure fracton order, by varying the choice of normal subgroup NNN. We demonstrate that certain universal data of the topological excitations and their mobilities are directly related to the choice of GGG and NNN, and also present complementary perspectives on these orders: certain orders may be obtained by gauging a global symmetry which enriches a particular fracton order, by either fractionalizing on or permuting the excitations with restricted mobility, while certain hybrid orders can be obtained by condensing excitations in a stack of initially decoupled, two-dimensional topological orders.
Inspired by recent developments generalizing Jordan-Wigner dualities to higher dimensions, we develop a framework of such dualities using an algebraic formalism for translation-invariant Hamiltonians proposed by Haah. We prove that given a translation-invariant fermionic system with general qqq-body interactions, where qqq is even, a local mapping preserving global fermion parity to a dual Pauli spin model exists and is unique up to a choice of basis. Furthermore, the dual spin model is constructive, and we present various examples of these dualities. As an application, we bosonize fermionic systems where free-fermion hopping terms are absent (q≥4q \ge 4q≥4) and fermion parity is conserved on submanifolds such as higher-form, line, planar or fractal symmetry. For some cases in 3+1D, bosonizing such a system can give rise to fracton models where the emergent particles are immobile but yet can behave in certain ways like fermions. These models may be examples of new nonrelativistic 't Hooft anomalies. Furthermore, fermionic subsystem symmetries are also present in various Majorana stabilizer codes, such as the color code or the checkerboard model, and we give examples where their duals are cluster states or new fracton models distinct from their doubled CSS codes.