Beecroft Building, Department of Physics, University of Oxford, Parks Road, Oxford, OX1 3PU
Sheng-Jie Huang, University of Oxford
Benedikt Placke, benedikt.placke@physics.ox.ac.uk
Quantum matter through the lens of symmetry topological field theory
It is well known that symmetry offers valuable insights for organizing quantum phases of matter and leads to important physical consequences, such as conservation laws and constraints on the low-energy dynamics of a quantum field theory. Recently, significant progress has been made in generalizing the concept of symmetry and exploring its connection to topological defects. In this talk, I will introduce a topological holographic principle for generalized symmetries, which describes the generalized symmetry of a quantum system in terms of a symmetry topological field theory (symTFT) in one higher dimension. This framework decouples the topological data from the local dynamics of the theory and provides a unified description of symmetry and duality in both gapped and gapless phases of matter. Specifically, I will focus on various exotic quantum critical points and gapless phases in (1+1)d, including phase transitions between symmetry-protected topological (SPT) phases, symmetry-enriched quantum critical points, deconfined quantum critical points, and intrinsically gapless SPT phases.