Categorical Symmetries at Criticality

TL;DR

This paper investigates the behavior of categorical symmetries at various higher-dimensional critical points and gapless phases, revealing their distinct properties compared to gapped phases through analytical evaluation.

Contribution

It provides the first analytical study of categorical symmetries at higher-dimensional critical and gapless states, expanding understanding beyond gapped phases.

Findings

Categorical symmetries behave differently at critical points compared to gapped phases.

Analytical evaluation of categorical symmetries at Lifshitz criticality, photon phases, and systems with subsystem symmetries.

Demonstrates the varied behavior of categorical symmetries in different gapless states.

Abstract

We study the concept of "categorical symmetry" introduced recently, which in the most basic sense refers to a pair of dual symmetries, such as the Ising symmetries of the $1d$ quantum Ising model and its self-dual counterpart. In this manuscript we study discrete categorical symmetry at higher dimensional critical points and gapless phases. At these selected gapless states of matter, we can evaluate the behavior of categorical symmetries analytically. We analyze the categorical symmetry at the following examples of criticality: (1) Lifshit critical point of a $(2+1)d$ quantum Ising system; (2) $(3+1)d$ photon phase as an intermediate gapless phase between the topological order and the confined phase of 3d $Z_2$ quantum gauge theory; (3) $2d$ and $3d$ examples of systems with both categorical symmetries (either 0-form or 1-form categorical symmetries) and subsystem symmetries. We demonstrate that at some of these gapless states of matter the categorical symmetries have very different behavior from the nearby gapped phases.