Higher-Form Subsystem Symmetry Breaking: Subdimensional Criticality and Fracton Phase Transitions

Understand

Subsystem symmetry has emerged as a powerful organizing principle for unconventional quantum phases of matter, most prominently fracton topological orders.

• Here, we focus on a special subclass of such symmetries, known as higher-form subsystem symmetries, which allow us to adapt tools from the study of conventional topological phases to the fracton setting.
• We demonstrate that certain transitions out of familiar fracton phases, including the X-cube model, can be understood in terms of the spontaneous breaking of higher-form subsystem symmetries.
• We find simple pictures for these seemingly complicated fracton topological phase transitions by relating them in an exact manner, via gauging, to spontaneous higher-form subsystem symmetry breaking phase transitions of decoupled stacks of lower-dimensional models.