A Modified Villain Formulation of Fractons and Other Exotic Theories

TL;DR

This paper reformulates exotic theories like fractons on a lattice using the Villain approach, making them closer to continuum models and revealing properties like emergent symmetries and dualities, thus bridging condensed matter and high-energy perspectives.

Contribution

It introduces a modified Villain lattice formulation for fracton and exotic theories, improving their continuum correspondence and clarifying their symmetry and duality structures.

Findings

Models exhibit emergent global symmetries

Models reveal surprising dualities

Provides rigorous continuum formulations

Abstract

We reformulate known exotic theories (including theories of fractons) on a Euclidean spacetime lattice. We write them using the Villain approach and then we modify them to a convenient range of parameters. The new lattice models are closer to the continuum limit than the original lattice versions. In particular, they exhibit many of the recently found properties of the continuum theories including emergent global symmetries and surprising dualities. Also, these new models provide a clear and rigorous formulation to the continuum models and their singularities. In appendices, we use this approach to review well-studied lattice models and their continuum limits. These include the XY-model, the $\mathbb{Z}_N$ clock-model, and various gauge theories in diverse dimensions. This presentation clarifies the relation between the condensed-matter and the high-energy views of these systems. It emphasizes the role of symmetries associated with the topology of field space, duality, and various anomalies.