Fractons and exotic symmetries from branes

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates how various fracton-related quantum field theories, including foliated, exotic, and infinite-component Chern-Simons theories, can be realized on brane world-volumes, linking them to string theory frameworks.

Contribution

It provides a novel realization of fracton-related field theories within string theory by embedding them on brane world-volumes, opening new avenues for their analysis.

Findings

Foliated, exotic, and infinite-component Chern-Simons theories can be constructed on branes.

This embedding connects fracton theories to string theory, enabling new analytical tools.

Potential insights into fracton physics through string-theoretic methods.

Abstract

The emerging study of fractons, a new type of quasi-particle with restricted mobility, has motivated the construction of several classes of interesting continuum quantum field theories with novel properties. One such class consists of foliated field theories which, roughly, are built by coupling together fields supported on the leaves of foliations of spacetime. Another approach, which we refer to as exotic field theory, focuses on constructing Lagrangians consistent with special symmetries (like subsystem symmetries) that are adjacent to fracton physics. A third framework is that of infinite-component Chern-Simons theories, which attempts to generalize the role of conventional Chern-Simons theory in describing (2+1)D Abelian topological order to fractonic order in (3+1)D. The study of these theories is ongoing, and many of their properties remain to be understood. Historically, it has been fruitful to study QFTs by embedding them into string theory. One way this can be done is via D-branes, extended objects whose dynamics can, at low energies, be described in terms of conventional quantum field theory. QFTs that can be realized in this way can then be analyzed using the rich mathematical and physical structure of string theory. In this paper, we show that foliated field theories, exotic field theories, and infinite-component Chern-Simons theories can all be realized on the world-volumes of branes. We hope that these constructions will ultimately yield valuable insights into the physics of these interesting field theories.