2017/01/03 by Sagar Vijay, Vijay, Sagar · 1 citation
Physics and Astronomy · #Advanced Condensed Matter Physics #FOS: Physical sciences #Quantum many-body systems #Statistical Mechanics (cond-mat.stat-mech) #Strongly Correlated Electrons (cond-mat.str-el) #Theoretical and Computational Physics
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.1701.00762
openalex publication_date 2017/01/03 · openalex created_date 2017/02/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
Starting from an isotropic configuration of intersecting, two-dimensional toric codes, we construct a fracton topological phase introduced in Ref. [26], which is characterized by immobile, point- like topological excitations ("fractons"), and degenerate ground-states on the torus that are locally indistinguishable. Our proposal leads to a simple description of the fracton excitations and of the ground-state as a "loop" condensate, and provides a basis for building new 3D topological orders such as a natural, ZN generalization of this fracton phase, which we introduce. We describe the rich phase structure of our layered ZN system. By invoking a lattice duality, we demonstrate that when N ≥ 5, there is an intermediate phase that appears between the decoupled, layered system and the fracton topologically-ordered state, which opens the possibility of a continuous transition into the fracton topological phase. We conclude by presenting a solvable model, that interpolates between the fracton phase and a confined phase in which the phase transition is first-order.