Taiichi Nakanishi

In accordance with recent progress of fracton topological phases, unusual topological phases of matter hosting fractionalized quasiparticle excitations with mobility constraints, new type of symmetry is studied — multipole symmetry, associated with conservation of multipoles. Based on algebraic relation between dipole and global charges, we introduce a series of (d + 1)-dimensional BF theories with p-form gauge fields, which admit dipole of spatially extended excitations, and study their physical properties. We elucidate that gauge invariant loops have unusual form, containing linear function of the spatial coordinate, which leads to the position dependent braiding statistics and unusual ground state degeneracy dependence on the system size. We also show that the theories exhibit a mixed ’t Hooft anomaly between p-form and (d − p)-form dipole symmetries, which is canceled by an invertible theory defined in one dimensional higher via anomaly inflow mechanism.

Spurred by the recent development of fracton topological phases, unusual topological phases possessing fractionalized quasiparticles with mobility constraints, the concept of symmetries has been renewed. In particular, in accordance with the progress of multipole symmetries, associated with conservation of multipoles, such as dipole or quadruple moments as well as global charges, there have been proposed topological phases with such symmetries. These topological phases are unconventional because excitations are subject to mobility constraints corresponding to the multipole symmetries. We demonstrate a way to construct such phases by preparing layers of symmetry protected topological (SPT) phases and implementing gauging a global symmetry. After gauging, the statistics of a fractional excitation is altered when crossing the SPT phases, resulting in topological phases with the multipole symmetries. The way we construct the phases allows us to have a comprehensive understanding of field theories of topological phases with the multipole symmetries and other fracton models. Published by the American Physical Society 2024

We study various non-relativistic field theories with exotic symmetries called subsystem symmetries, which have recently attracted much attention in the context of fractons. We start with a scalar theory called ϕ-theory in d + 1 dimensions and discuss its properties studied in literature for d ≤ 3 such as self-duality, vacuum structure, ’t Hooft anomaly, anomaly inflow and lattice regularization. Next we study a theory called chiral ϕ-theory which is an analogue of a chiral boson with subsystem symmetries. Then we discuss theories including fermions with subsystem symmetries. We first construct a supersymmetric version of the ϕ-theory and dropping its bosonic part leads us to a purely fermionic theory with subsystem symmetries called ψ-theory. We argue that lattice regularization of the ψ-theory generically suffers from an analogue of doubling problem as previously pointed out in the d = 3 case. We propose an analogue of Wilson fermion to avoid the “doubling” problem. We also supersymmetrize the chiral ϕ-theory and dropping the bosonic part again gives us a purely fermionic theory. We finally discuss vacuum structures of the theories with fermions and find that they are infinitely degenerate because of spontaneous breaking of subsystem symmetries.