Geometric Categories for Continuous Gauging

TL;DR

This paper introduces a categorical framework that generalizes symmetry gauging from finite groups to Lie groups in arbitrary dimensions, enabling systematic analysis of symmetries and their breaking in gauge theories.

Contribution

It develops a unified categorical approach for gauging continuous and finite symmetries, extending fusion categories to geometric categories internal to stacks, and constructs a functorial symmetry topological field theory.

Findings

Recovers electric and magnetic higher-form symmetries in G-gauge theory

Encodes electric symmetry breaking with charged matter

Provides a uniform categorical method for symmetry analysis

Abstract

We develop a unified categorical framework for gauging both continuous and finite symmetries in arbitrary spacetime dimensions. Our construction applies to geometric categories i.e. categories internal to stacks. This generalizes the familiar setting of fusion categories, which describe finite group symmetries, to the case of Lie group symmetries. Within this framework, we obtain a functorial Symmetry Topological Field Theory together with its natural boundaries, allowing us to compute associated endomorphism categories and Drinfeld centers in a uniform way. For a given symmetry group $G$, our framework recovers the electric and magnetic higher-form symmetries expected in $G$-gauge theory. Moreover, it naturally encodes electric breaking symmetry in the presence of charged matter, reproducing known physical phenomena in a categorical setting.