We discuss nonstandard continuum quantum field theories in 2+1 dimensions. They exhibit exotic global symmetries, a subtle spectrum of charged excitations, and dualities similar to dualities of systems in 1+1 dimensions. These continuum models represent the low-energy limits of certain known lattice systems. One key aspect of these continuum field theories is the important role played by discontinuous field configurations. In two companion papers, we will present 3+1-dimensional versions of these systems. In particular, we will discuss continuum quantum field theories of some models of fractons.
Although creating a unified theory in Elementary Particles Physics is still an open problem, there are a lot of attempts for unifying other fields of physics. Following such unifications, we regard a two dimensional (2D) classical
Φ4 field theory model to study several field theories with different symmetries in various dimensions. While the completeness of this model has been already proved by a mapping between statistical mechanics and quantum information theory, here, we take into account a fundamental systematic approach with purely mathematical basis to re-derive such completeness in a general manner. Due to simplicity and generality, we believe that our method leads to a general approach which can be understood by other physical communities as well as quantum information theorists. Furthermore, our proof of the completeness is not only a proof-of-principle, but also an interesting algorithmic proof. We consider a discrete version of a general field theory as an arbitrary polynomial function of fields which is defined on a lattice with arbitrary dimension. Then we give a few specific transformations on such field theories to convert them to a classical
ϕ4 field theory on a 2D square lattice with the same Partition function. We also extend the results to the
U(1) lattice gauge theories in arbitrary dimensions.
Consider the partition function of a classical system in two spatial dimensions, or the Euclidean path integral of a quantum system in two space-time dimensions, both on a lattice. We show that the tensor network renormalization algorithm [G. Evenbly and G. Vidal Phys. Rev. Lett. 115, 180405 (2015)] can be used to implement local scale transformations on these objects, namely, a lattice version of conformal maps. Specifically, we explain how to implement the lattice equivalent of the logarithmic conformal map that transforms the Euclidean plane into a cylinder. As an application, and with the 2D critical Ising model as a concrete example, we use this map to build a lattice version of the scaling operators of the underlying conformal field theory, from which one can extract their scaling dimensions and operator product expansion coefficients.