English

Emanant and emergent symmetry-topological-order from low-energy spectrum

Strongly Correlated Electrons 2026-03-24 v2 High Energy Physics - Theory

Abstract

Low-energy emanant and emergent symmetries can be anomalous, higher-group, or non-invertible. A way to systematically capture the properties of such symmetries is through the topological orders in one-higher dimension, known as symmetry topological orders (symTOs). Consequently, identifying the emergent or emanant symmetry of a system is not simply a matter of determining its group structure, but rather of computing the corresponding symTO. In this work, we develop a method to compute the symTO of 1+1D systems by analyzing their low-energy spectra under closed boundary conditions with all possible symmetry twists. Following this approach, we show that the gapless antiferromagnetic (AF) spin-1/21/2 Heisenberg model possesses an exact emanant symTO corresponding to the D8D_8 quantum double, when the global symmetry is restricted to the Z2x×Z2z\mathbb{Z}_2^x \times \mathbb{Z}_2^z subgroup of the SO(3)SO(3) spin-rotation symmetry and lattice translations. Moreover, this model exhibits an emergent SO(4)SO(4) symmetry, whose exact components are described jointly by automorphisms of the D8D_8 quantum double and the SO(3)SO(3) spin-rotations. Using the condensable algebras of the emanant symTO, we further identify several other phases that may be accessible by modifying interactions among low-energy excitations: (1) a gapped dimer phase, connected to the AF phase via an SO(4)SO(4) rotation, (2) a commensurate collinear ferromagnetic phase that breaks translation by one site with a ωk2\omega \sim k^2 mode, (3) an incommensurate, translation-symmetric ferromagnetic phase featuring both ωk2\omega \sim k^2 and ωk\omega \sim k modes, (4) and an incommensurate ferromagnetic phase that breaks translation by one site with both ωk2\omega \sim k^2 and ωk\omega \sim k modes.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2509.08879,
  title  = {Emanant and emergent symmetry-topological-order from low-energy spectrum},
  author = {Zixin Jessie Chen and Ömer M. Aksoy and Cenke Xu and Xiao-Gang Wen},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2509.08879},
  year   = {2026}
}

Comments

28 pages, 8 figures