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arXiv:2211.13047 · Journal of High Energy Physics

Lattice quantum Villain Hamiltonians: compact scalars, U(1) gauge theories, fracton models and quantum Ising model dualities

Lucca Fazza, Tin Sulejmanpašić

Published May 2, 2023• 27 citations

Abstract

A bstract We construct Villain Hamiltonians for compact scalars and abelian gauge theories. The Villain integers are promoted to integral spectrum operators, whose canonical conjugates are naturally compact scalars. Further, depending on the theory, these conjugate operators can be interpreted as (higher-form) gauge fields. If a gauge symmetry is imposed on these dual gauge fields, a natural constraint on the Villain operator leads to the absence of defects (e.g. vortices, monopoles,…). These lattice models therefore have the same symmetry and anomaly structure as their corresponding continuum models. Moreover they can be formulated in a way that makes the well-know dualities look manifest, e.g. a compact scalar in 2d has a T-duality, in 3d is dual to a U(1) gauge theory, etc. We further discuss the gauged version of compact scalars on the lattice, its anomalies and solution, as well as a particular limit of the gauged XY model at strong coupling which reduces to the transverse-field Ising model. The construction for higher-form gauge theories is similar. We apply these ideas to the constructions of some models which are of interest to fracton physics, in particular the XY-plaquette model and the tensor gauge field model. The XY-plaquette model in 2+1d coupled to a tensor gauge fields at strong gauge coupling is also exactly described by a transverse field quantum J 1 − J 2 Ising model with J 1 = 2 J 2 , and discuss the phase structure of such models.

DOI: 10.1007/jhep05(2023)017

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A bstract We construct Villain Hamiltonians for compact scalars and abelian gauge theories. The Villain integers are promoted to integral spectrum operators, whose canonical conjugates are naturally compact scalars. Further, depending on the theory, these conjugate operators can be interpreted as (higher-form) gauge fields. If a gauge symmetry is imposed on these dual gauge fields, a natural constraint on the Villain operator leads to the absence of defects (e.g. vortices, monopoles,…). These lattice models therefore have the same symmetry and anomaly structure as their corresponding continuum models. Moreover they can be formulated in a way that makes the well-know dualities look manifest, e.g. a compact scalar in 2d has a T-duality, in 3d is dual to a U(1) gauge theory, etc. We further discuss the gauged version of compact scalars on the lattice, its anomalies and solution, as well as a particular limit of the gauged XY model at strong coupling which reduces to the transverse-field Ising model. The construction for higher-form gauge theories is similar. We apply these ideas to the constructions of some models which are of interest to fracton physics, in particular the XY-plaquette model and the tensor gauge field model. The XY-plaquette model in 2+1d coupled to a tensor gauge fields at strong gauge coupling is also exactly described by a transverse field quantum J 1 − J 2 Ising model with J 1 = 2 J 2 , and discuss the phase structure of such models.

The (2+1)-dimensional continuum Lifshitz theory of a free compact scalar field plays a prominent role in a variety of quantum systems in condensed matter physics and high energy physics. It is known that in compact space, it has an infinite ground-state degeneracy. In order to understand this theory better, we consider two candidate lattice regularizations of it using the modified Villain formalism. We show that these two lattice theories have significantly different global symmetries (including a dipole global symmetry), anomalies, ground-state degeneracies, and dualities. In particular, one of them is self-dual. Given these theories and their global symmetries, we can couple them to corresponding gauge theories. These are two different

\text{U}(1)

tensor gauge theories. The resulting models have excitations with restricted mobility, i.e., fractons. Finally, we give an exact lattice realization of the fracton and lineon-elasticity dualities for the Lifshitz theory, and scalar and vector charge gauge theories.

Fracton theories possess exponentially degenerate ground states, excitations with restricted mobility, and nontopological higher-form symmetries. This paper shows that such theories can be defined on arbitrary spatial lattices in three dimensions. The key element of this construction is a generalization of higher-form gauge theories to so-called

\mathfrak{F}_p

gauge theories, in which gauge transformations of rank-

k

fields are specified by rank-

(k - p)

gauge parameters. The

\mathbb{Z}_2

rank-two theory of type

\mathfrak{F}_2

, placed on a cubic lattice and coupled to scalar matter, is shown to have a topological phase exactly dual to the well-known X-cube model. Generalizations of this example yield novel fracton theories. In the continuum, the

\mathrm{U}(1)

rank-two theory of type

\mathfrak{F}_2

is shown to have a perturbatively gapless fracton regime that cannot be consistently interpreted as a tensor gauge theory of any kind. The compact scalar fields that naturally couple to this

\mathfrak{F}_2

theory also show gapless fracton behavior; on a cubic lattice they have a conserved

\mathrm{U}(1)

charge and dipole moment, but these particular charges are not necessarily conserved on more general lattices. The construction straightforwardly generalizes to

\mathfrak{F}_2

theories of nonabelian rank-two gauge fields, giving first examples of pure nonabelian higher-rank theories.

Regarding the duality of the XY-plaquette model in the

2+1d

system, We compared and discussed the equivalence and difference between the modified Villain formulation, recently introduced by Gorantla et al. to study duality in exotic field theories such as fracton theory, and the standard Villain formulation and dual Hamiltonian method we introduced in our previous paper to study duality between Josephson junctions and quantum phase slips in the

1+1d

system.

We present a fermionic lattice Hamiltonian that exactly realizes the

\mathrm{U(1)}_\mathrm{L}\times \mathrm{U(1)}_\mathrm{R}

global symmetry and the associated chiral anomalies of a massless Dirac fermion in 1+1 dimensions. The construction couples Villain bosons to a Kitaev chain of Majorana fermions, where the bosonic fields are essential for evading Nielsen-Ninomiya-type no-go theorems. For two copies of our model, we realize the anomaly-free

\mathrm{U(1)}_{3450}

global symmetry and construct symmetric boundary conditions. We analytically demonstrate symmetric mass generation by mapping the symmetry-preserving six-fermion interactions to fermion bilinear terms using fermionic T-duality. Finally, by gauging general anomaly-free global symmetries, we obtain a broad class of lattice chiral gauge theories. As nontrivial applications, we compute the mass spectra of the lattice Schwinger model and the 3450 gauge theory, finding agreement with the corresponding continuum results.