Emergent Fractons

This talk revolves about low-energy effective field theories with fractonic degrees of freedom characterised by mobility constraints. The fractonic features descend from spatially-dependent rigid symmetries, like sub-system symmetries and multipole symmetries. We focus mainly on the emergence of fractonic dynamics in standard elastic theory and generalization thereof. Elastic defects behave at low energy as fractons and they can be described as the charged objects of a dual gauge theory through Hubbard-Stratonovich duality. We propose to formulate such dual gauge theory purely in terms of standard vector gauge fields, as opposed to the customary formulation in terms of tensor gauge fields. The new formulation is promising in view of addressing some fundamental open questions related to the coupling of fractonic theories to a background geometry, relevant for their theoretical consolidation as well as for applications. If time allows, we also comment on the relation of fractons with dynamical breaking of translation symmetry and the possibility to UV complete some known fractonic models.

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