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Annual Review of Condensed Matter Physics

Volume 16, 2025

Quantum Liquids: Emergent Higher-Rank Gauge Theory and Fractons

  • Yizhi You1
  • Department of Physics, Northeastern University, Boston, Massachusetts, USA; email: [email protected]
  • Vol. 16:83-102 (Volume publication date March 2025)
  • First published as a Review in Advance on September 17, 2024
  • Copyright © 2025 by the author(s).
    This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. See credit lines of images or other third-party material in this article for license information.

Abstract

Fractons emerge from many-body systems, featuring subdimensional particles with restricted mobility. These particles have attracted interest for their roles across disciplines, including topological quantum codes, quantum field theory, emergent gravity, and quantum information. They display unique nonequilibrium behaviors such as nonergodicity and glassy dynamics. This review offers a structured overview of fracton phenomena, especially those of gapless fracton liquids, which enable collective modes similar to gauge fluctuations in Maxwell's electromagnetic framework, yet their phenomena are distinguished by a unique conservation law that restricts the mobility of individual charges and monopoles. We delve into the theoretical basis of three-dimensional (3D) fracton liquids, exploring emergent symmetric tensor gauge theories and their properties. We also discuss the material realization of fracton liquids in Yb-based pyrochlore lattices and other synthetic quantum matter platforms.

Keyword(s): close-packed tiling system, fracton, higher-rank gauge theory, pinch point, tensor electromagnetism
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2025-03-10
2025-06-22
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Quantum Liquids: Emergent Higher-Rank Gauge Theory and Fractons
Annual Review of Condensed Matter Physics 16, 83 (2025); https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-conmatphys-040721-023549
/content/journals/10.1146/annurev-conmatphys-040721-023549
/content/journals/10.1146/annurev-conmatphys-040721-023549
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