“Immobile topological quantum matter”

Leo Radzihovsky

Monday, August 29th at 4:00pm

I will discuss a burgeoning field of “fractons” – a class of models where quasi-particles are strictly immobile or display restricted mobility. Focusing on just a cor-ner of this fast-growing subject, a will explain how one class of such theories – sym-metric tensor gauge theories surprisingly emerge from seemingly mundane elasticity-ty of a two-dimensional quantum crystal. The disclination and dislocation crystal defects respectively map onto charges and dipoles of the fracton gauge theory. This fracton-elasticity duality leads to predictions of fractonic phases and quantum phase transitions to their descendants, that are duals of the commensurate crystal, supersolid, smectic, and hexatic liquid crystals. [Read more…]