Fractal Subsystem Symmetries, 't Hooft Anomalies, and UV/IR Mixing

Abstract

In this work, we study unconventional anisotropic topologically ordered phases in $3d$ that manifest type-II fractonic physics along submanifolds. While they behave as usual topological order along a preferred spatial direction, their physics along perpendicular planes is dictated by the presence of fractal subsystem symmetries, completely restricting the mobility of anyonic excitations and their bound states. We consider an explicit lattice model realization of such phases and proceed to study their properties under periodic boundary conditions and, later, in the presence of boundaries. We find that for specific lattice sizes, the system possesses line and fractal membrane symmetries that are mutually anomalous, resulting in a nontrivially gapped ground state space. This amounts to the spontaneous breaking of the fractal symmetries, implying a subextensive ground state degeneracy. For the remaining system sizes the fractal symmetries are explicitly broken by the periodic boundary conditions, which is intrinsically related to the uniqueness of the ground state. Despite that, the system is still topologically ordered since locally created quasiparticles have nontrivial mutual statistics and, in the presence of boundaries, it still presents anomalous edge modes. The intricate symmetry interplay dictated by the lattice size is a wild manifestation of ultraviolet/infrared (UV/IR) mixing.