Fracton phases are new types of phases of matter characterized by subsystem global symmetry, which is a generalized global symmetry whose symmetry operator is partially topological. Their continuum low-energy effective descriptions admit two different formulations: an exotic quantum field theory (QFT) using exotic tensor gauge fields, and a foliated QFT constructed from a foliation structure and foliated gauge fields. For certain fracton QFTs, these two descriptions are equivalent, which is called the foliated-exotic duality. In this dissertation, we extend the foliated-exotic duality by combining it with the anomaly inflow mechanism for 't Hooft anomalies of subsystem symmetries. This dissertation has two main results. First, we discuss the exotic and foliated
BF theories in 2+1 dimensions, which exhibit the mixed 't Hooft anomaly of
ZN×ZN subsystem symmetry. This anomaly is captured by a subsystem symmetry-protected topological (SSPT) phase for
ZN×ZN subsystem symmetry in one dimension higher. By extending the foliated-exotic duality in the fractonic
BF theory to the SSPT phase, we establish the field correspondences in the SSPT phase and construct the foliated description of the SSPT phase. Second, we discuss the exotic
ϕ-theory in 2+1 dimensions -- a fractonic gapless scalar field theory, which has the 't Hooft anomaly of
U(1)×U(1) subsystem symmetry. The anomaly is captured by an SSPT phase for
U(1)×U(1) subsystem symmetry in 3+1 dimensions via the anomaly inflow mechanism. Extending the foliated-exotic duality to the
ϕ-theory, we establish field correspondences in the
ϕ-theory and construct the foliated
ϕ-theory that is equivalent to the exotic
ϕ-theory. This provides the first example of the foliated-exotic duality in gapless theories.
Abstract This work investigates the gapped interfaces of 3+1d fracton phases of matter using foliated gauge theories and lattice models. We analyze the gapped boundaries and gapped interfaces in X cube model, and the gapped interfaces between the X-cube model and the toric code. The gapped interfaces are either “undecorated” or “decorated”, where the “decorated” interfaces have additional Chern-Simons like actions for foliated gauge fields. We discover many new gapped boundaries and interfaces, such as (1) a gapped boundary for X-cube model where the electric lineons orthogonal to the interface become the magnetic lineons, the latter are the composite of magnetic planons; (2) a Kramers-Wannier-duality type gapped interface between the X-cube model and the toric code model from gauging planar subsystem one-form symmetry; and (3) an electromagnetic duality interface in the X-cube model that exchanges the electric and magnetic lineons.
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.
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
G, a choice of an Abelian normal subgroup
N, 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
G gauge theory and a pure fracton order, by varying the choice of normal subgroup
N. We demonstrate that certain universal data of the topological excitations and their mobilities are directly related to the choice of
G and
N, 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.
A bstract Symmetry topological field theory (SymTFT), or topological holography, posits a correspondence between symmetries in a d -dimensional theory and topological order in a ( d + 1)-dimensional theory. In this work, we extend this framework to subsystem symmetries and develop subsystem SymTFT as a systematic tool to characterize and classify subsystem symmetry-protected topological (SSPT) phases. For (2 + 1)D gapped phases, we introduce a 2-foliated (3 + 1)D exotic tensor gauge theory (which is equivalent to 2-foliated (3 + 1)D BF theory via exotic duality) as the subsystem SymTFT and systematically analyze its topological boundary conditions and linearly rigid subsystem symmetries. Taking subsystem symmetry groups G = ℤ N and G = ℤ N × ℤ M as examples, we demonstrate how to recover the classification scheme
C[G] C G = H 2 ( G ×2 , U(1))/ H 2 ( G , U(1))) 3 , which was previously derived by examining topological invariant under linear subsystem-symmetric local unitary transformations in the lattice Hamiltonian formalism. To illustrate the correspondence between field-theoretic and lattice descriptions, we further analyze ℤ 2 × ℤ 2 and ℤ N × ℤ M cluster state models as concrete examples.
Due to the recent studies of the fracton topological phases, the host of which deconfined quasiparticle excitations with mobility restrictions, the concept of symmetries has been updated. Focusing on one of these new symmetries, multipole symmetries, including global, dipole, and quadruple symmetries, and gauge fields associated with them, we construct new sets of
ZN(2+1)-dimensional foliated background-field (BF) theories, where BF theories of conventional topological phases are stacked in layers with couplings between them. By investigating gauge-invariant nonlocal operators, we show that our foliated BF theories exhibit unusual ground-state degeneracy depending on the system size; it depends on the greatest common divisor between
N and the system size. Our result provides an important connection between UV lattice models of the fracton topological phases and other unconventional ones in view of foliated field theories.