Position-Dependent Excitations and UV/IR Mixing in the $\mathbb{Z}_{N}$ Rank-2 Toric Code and its Low-Energy Effective Field Theory

TL;DR

This paper explores the coupling of symmetry and topological order in a 2+1d $ ext{Z}_N$ rank-2 toric code, revealing position-dependent excitations, novel anyon structures, and UV/IR mixing effects in its low-energy effective field theory.

Contribution

It introduces a detailed analysis of symmetry-enriched topological order with position-dependent excitations and develops a Chern-Simons description capturing the complex anyon structure and symmetry actions.

Findings

Ground state degeneracy depends on lattice size and N

Identification of N^6 anyon types despite N^{N^2+2N} potential types

UV/IR mixing manifests in the topological properties and degeneracy

Abstract

We investigate how symmetry and topological order are coupled in the ${2+1}$d $\mathbb{Z}_{N}$ rank-2 toric code for general $N$, which is an exactly solvable point in the Higgs phase of a symmetric rank-2 $U(1)$ gauge theory. The symmetry enriched topological order present has a non-trivial realization of square-lattice translation (and rotation/reflection) symmetry, where anyons on different lattice sites have different types and belong to different superselection sectors. We call such particles "position-dependent excitations." As a result, in the rank-2 toric code anyons can hop by one lattice site in some directions while only by $N$ lattice sites in others, reminiscent of fracton topological order in ${3+1}$d. We find that while there are $N^2$ flavors of $e$ charges and $2N$ flavors of $m$ fluxes, there are not $N^{N^{2} + 2N}$ anyon types. Instead, there are $N^{6}$ anyon types, and we can use Chern-Simons theory with six $U(1)$ gauge fields to describe all of them. While the lattice translations permute anyon types, we find that such permutations cannot be expressed as transformations on the six $U(1)$ gauge fields. Thus the realization of translation symmetry in the $U^6(1)$ Chern-Simons theory is not known. Despite this, we find a way to calculate the translation-dependent properties of the theory. In particular, we find that the ground state degeneracy on an ${L_{x}\times L_{y}}$ torus is ${N^{3}\gcd(L_{x},N) \gcd(L_{y},N) \gcd(L_{x},L_{y},N)}$, where $\gcd$ stands for "greatest common divisor." We argue that this is a manifestation of UV/IR mixing which arises from the interplay between lattice symmetries and topological order.