Nonliquid cellular states: Gluing gauge-higher-symmetry-breaking versus gauge-higher-symmetry-extension interfacial defects

Abstract

The existence of quantum nonliquid states and fracton orders, both gapped and gapless states, challenges our understanding of phases of entangled matter. We generalize the cellular topological states to liquid or nonliquid cellular states. We propose a mechanism to construct more general non-Abelian states by gluing gauge-symmetry-breaking versus gauge-symmetry-extension interfaces as extended defects in a cellular network, including defects of higher symmetries, in any dimension. Our approach also naturally incorporates the anyonic particle/string condensations and composite string (related to particle-string or p-string)/membrane condensations. This approach shows gluing the familiar extended topological quantum field theory or conformal field theory data via topology, geometry, and renormalization consistency criteria (via certain modified group cohomology or cobordism theory data) in a tensor network can still guide us to analyze the nonliquid states. (Part of the Abelian construction can be understood from the $K$-matrix Chern-Simons theory approach and the coupled-layer-by-junction constructions.) This approach may also lead us toward a unifying framework for quantum systems of both higher symmetries and subsystem/subdimensional symmetries.