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We consider a SU(2) lattice gauge theory on the square lattice, with a single fundamental complex fermion and a single fundamental complex boson on each lattice site. Projective symmetries of the gauge-charged fermions are chosen so that they match with those of the spinons of the $\pi$-flux spin liquid. Global symmetries of all gauge-invariant observables are chosen to match with those of the particle-hole symmetric electronic Hubbard model at half-filling. Consequently, both the fundamental fermion and fundamental boson move in an average background $\pi$-flux, their gauge-invariant composite is the physical electron, and eliminating gauge fields in a strong gauge-coupling expansion yields an effective extended Hubbard model for the electrons. The SU(2) gauge theory displays several confining/Higgs phases: a nodal $d$-wave superconductor, and states with N\'eel, valence-bond solid, charge, or staggered current orders. There are also a number of quantum phase transitions between these phases which are very likely described by 2+1 dimensional deconfined conformal gauge theories, and we present large flavor expansions for such theories. These include the phenomenologically attractive case of a transition between a conventional insulator with a charge gap and N\'eel order, and a conventional $d$-wave superconductor with gapless Bogoliubov quasiparticles at 4 nodal points in the Brillouin zone. We also apply our approach to the honeycomb lattice, where we find a bicritical point at the junction of N\'eel, valence bond solid (Kekul\'e), and Dirac semi-metal phases., Comment: 47 pages, 20 figures

Symmetries and their anomalies are powerful tools for understanding quantum systems. However, realistic systems are often subject to disorders, dissipation and decoherence. In many circumstances, symmetries are not exact but only on average. This work investigates the constraints on mixed states resulting from non-commuting average symmetries. We will focus on the cases where the commutation relations of the average symmetry generators are violated by nontrivial phases, and call such average symmetry anomalous. We show that anomalous average symmetry implies degeneracy in the density matrix eigenvalues, and present several lattice examples with average symmetries, including XY chain, Heisenberg chain, and deformed toric code models. In certain cases, the results can be further extended to reduced density matrices, leading to a new lower bound on the entanglement entropy. We discuss several applications in the contexts of many body localization, quantum channels, entanglement phase transitions and also derive new constraints on the Lindbladian evolution of open quantum systems., Comment: 37 pages, 1 figure

This work investigates the gapped interfaces of 3+1d fracton phases of matter using foliated gauge theories and lattice models. We analyze the gapped boundaries and gapped interfaces in X cube model, and the gapped interfaces between the X-cube model and the toric code. The gapped interfaces are either "undecorated" or "decorated", where the "decorated" interfaces have additional Chern-Simons like actions for foliated gauge fields. We discover many new gapped boundaries and interfaces, such as (1) a gapped boundary for X-cube model where the electric lineons orthogonal to the interface become the magnetic lineons, the latter are the composite of magnetic planons; (2) a Kramers-Wannier-duality type gapped interface between the X-cube model and the toric code model from gauging planar subsystem one-form symmetry; and (3) an electromagnetic duality interface in the X-cube model that exchanges the electric and magnetic lineons., Comment: 36 pages, 10 figures

Early studies proposed a connection between cuprate superconductivity and fractionalized spin liquid states. But the low temperature phase diagram is dominated by states without fractionalization, with a competition between superconductivity and charge-ordered states which break translational symmetry. Our theory uncovers novel features associated with a particular spin-liquid presumed to underlie the pseudogap metal, and shows that it has multiple nearly-degenerate instabilities to confinement of fractionalized excitations, leading to antiferromagnetism, $d$-wave superconductivity, and/or charge order. Our theory provides routes to resolving a number of open puzzles on the cuprate phase diagram. The spin liquid is described by a SU(2) gauge theory of $N_f=2$ massless fundamental Dirac fermions, has an emergent SO(5)$_f$ global symmetry, and is presumed to confine at low energies to the N\'eel state. At non-zero doping (or smaller Hubbard repulsion at half-filling) we argue that confinement occurs via the Higgs condensation of bosonic chargons carrying fundamental SU(2) gauge charges moving in $\pi$ flux. At half-filling, the low energy Higgs sector has $N_b=2$ relativistic bosons with a possible emergent SO(5)$_b$ global symmetry describing rotations between a $d$-wave superconductor, period-2 charge stripes, and the time-reversal breaking `$d$-density wave' state. We propose a deconfined quantum critical point between a confining state which breaks SO(5)$_f$ and a confining state which breaks SO(5)$_b$. The pattern of symmetry breaking within both SO(5)s is determined by terms likely irrelevant at the critical point, which can be chosen to obtain a transition between N\'eel order and $d$-wave superconductivity. A similar theory applies at non-zero doping and large $U$, with longer-range couplings of the chargons leading to charge order with longer periods., Comment: 10+9 pages, 10+5 figures; v4 Added Ya-Hui Zhang as co-author

We study the boundary theory of the $\mathbb{Z}_N$ X-cube model using a continuum perspective, from which the exchange statistics of a subset of bulk excitations can be recovered. We discuss various gapped boundary conditions that either preserve or break the translation/rotation symmetries on the boundary, and further present the corresponding ground state degeneracies on $T^2\times I$. The low-energy physics is highly sensitive to the boundary conditions: even the extensive part of the ground state degeneracy can vary when different sets of boundary conditions are chosen on the two boundaries. We also examine the anomaly inflow of the boundary theory and find that the X-cube model is not the unique (3+1)d theory that cancels the 't Hooft anomaly of the boundary., Comment: v2

When two layers of two-dimensional materials are assembled with a relative twist, moir\'e patterns arise, inducing a tremendous wealth of exotic phenomena. In this work, we consider twisting two triangular lattices hosting Dirac quantum spin liquids. A single decoupled layer is described by compact quantum electrodynamics in 2+1 dimensions (QED$_3$) with an emergent $\mathrm{U}(1)$ gauge field, which is assumed to flow to a strongly interacting fixed point in the IR with conformal symmetry. We use recent results for the quantum numbers of monopole operators, which tunnel $2 \pi$ fluxes of the compact gauge field. It is found that, in the bilayer system, interlayer monopole tunneling is a symmetry-allowed relevant perturbation which induces an (ordering) instability. We show using perturbation theory that upon twisting the two layers the system remains unstable under the interlayer interaction, but any finite twist angle softens this instability compared to the untwisted case. To analyse the resulting phase induced by the (twisted) interlayer tunneling, we use "conformal mean field theory", which reduces the interacting bilayer system to two copies of QED$_3$ coupled to background fields which are to be determined self-consistently. In the weak-coupling regime, where the interlayer coupling is weak compared to the energy scale set by the moir\'e lattice constant, we solve the self-consistency equations perturbatively. In the limit of strongly coupled layers, a local scaling approximation is used, and we find that the magnetically ordered state exhibits a lattice of magnetic vortices, with the lattice constant tunable through the twisting angle., Comment: 25 pages, 5 figures; v2 (added new Section IV on conformal perturbation theory, and several additional remarks)

We study the entanglement entropy in 1+1 dimensional conformal field theories in the presence of interfaces from a holographic perspective. Compared with the well-known case of boundary conformal field theories, interfaces allow for several interesting new observables. Depending on how the interface is located within the entangling region, the entanglement entropies differ and exhibit surprising new patterns and universal relations. While our analysis is performed within the framework of holography, we expect our results to hold more generally., Comment: v4, corrected formulas about entanglement entropy in the RS model

We extend the holographic duality between 3d pure gravity and the 2d Ising CFT proposed in [Phys. Rev. D 85 (2012) 024032] to CFTs with boundaries. Besides the usual asymptotic boundary, the dual bulk spacetime now has a real cutoff, on which live branes with finite tension, giving Neumann boundary condition on the metric tensor. The strongly coupled bulk theory requires that we dress the well-known semiclassical AdS/BCFT answer with boundary gravitons, turning the partition function into the form of Virasoro characters. Using this duality, we relate the brane tensions to the modular S-matrix elements of the dual BCFT and derive the transformation between gravitational solutions with different brane tensions under modular S action., Comment: 16+8 pages, v3

We study 3D pure Einstein quantum gravity with negative cosmological constant, in the regime where the AdS radius $l$ is of the order of the Planck scale. Specifically, when the Brown-Henneaux central charge $c=3l/2G_N$ ($G_N$ is the 3D Newton constant) equals $c=1/2$, we establish duality between 3D gravity and 2D Ising conformal field theory by matching gravity and conformal field theory partition functions for AdS spacetimes with general asymptotic boundaries. This duality was suggested by a genus-one calculation of Castro et al. [Phys. Rev. D {\bf 85}, 024032 (2012)]. Extension beyond genus-one requires new mathematical results based on 3D Topological Quantum Field Theory; these turn out to uniquely select the $c=1/2$ theory among all those with $c<1$, extending the previous results of Castro et al.. Previous work suggests the reduction of the calculation of the gravity partition function to a problem of summation over the orbits of the mapping class group action on a "vacuum seed". But whether or not the summation is well-defined for the general case was unknown before this work. Amongst all theories with Brown-Henneaux central charge $c<1$, the sum is finite and unique {\it only} when $c=1/2$, corresponding to a dual Ising conformal field theory on the asymptotic boundary., Comment: 54 pages, 12 figures

In this paper, we use the replica approach to study the R\'enyi entropy $S_L$ of generic locally excited states in (1+1)D CFTs, which are constructed from the insertion of multiple product of local primary operators on vacuum. Alternatively, one can calculate the R\'enyi entropy $S_R$ corresponding to the same states using Schmidt decomposition and operator product expansion, which reduces the multiple product of local primary operators to linear combination of operators. The equivalence $S_L=S_R$ translates into an identity in terms of the $F$ symbols and quantum dimensions for rational CFT, and the latter can be proved algebraically. This, along with a series of papers, gives a complete picture of how the quantum information quantities and the intrinsic structure of (1+1)D CFTs are consistently related., Comment: JHEP version, add more physical discussions on the results

We calculate the topological entanglement entropy (TEE) in Euclidean asymptotic AdS3 spacetime using surgery. The treatment is intrinsically three-dimensional. In the BTZ black hole background, several different bipartitions are applied. For the bipartition along the horizon between two single-sided black holes, TEE is exactly the Bekenstein-Hawking entropy, which supports the ER=EPR conjecture in the Euclidean case. For other bipartitions, we derive an Entangling-Thermal relation for each single-sided black hole, which is of topological origin. After summing over genus-one classical geometries, we compute TEE in the high-temperature regime. In the case where k=1, we find that TEE is the same as that for a Moonshine double state, given by the maximally-entangled superposition of 194 types of "anyons" in the 3d bulk, labeled by the irreducible representations of the Monster group. We propose this as the bulk analogue of the thermofield double state in the Euclidean spacetime. Comparing the TEE between thermal AdS3 and BTZ solutions, we discuss the implication of TEE on the Hawking-Page transition in 3d., Comment: version 2

In this paper we propose a Hamiltonian approach to gapped topological phases on an open surface with boundary. Our setting is an extension of the Levin-Wen model to a 2d graph on the open surface, whose boundary is part of the graph. We systematically construct a series of boundary Hamiltonians such that each of them, when combined with the usual Levin-Wen bulk Hamiltonian, gives rise to a gapped energy spectrum which is topologically protected; and the corresponding wave functions are robust under changes of the underlying graph that maintain the spatial topology of the system. We derive explicit ground-state wavefunctions of the system and show that the boundary types are classified by Morita-equivalent Frobenius algebras. We also construct boundary quasiparticle creation, measuring and hopping operators. These operators allow us to characterize the boundary quasiparticles by bimodules of Frobenius algebras. Our approach also offers a concrete set of tools for computations. We illustrate our approach by a few examples., Comment: 21 pages;references corrected