English

Non-Invertible Symmetries and Boundaries for Two-Dimensional Fermions

High Energy Physics - Theory 2026-05-15 v1 Strongly Correlated Electrons

Abstract

We study the relation between boundary conditions and categorical symmetries of two-dimensional fermionic conformal field theories. We determine all anomaly-free invertible global symmetries of two free complex Weyl fermions, which take the form Zk\mathbb{Z}_k for each primitive Pythagorean triple a2+b2=k2a^2 + b^2 = k^2. The theory is self-dual under gauging any of these symmetries, and so to each there is associated a non-invertible topological defect. We study the properties of these lines, and show that any conformal boundary condition of two Dirac fermions that preserves a U(1)2U(1)^2 symmetry can be found by dressing a trivial Dirichlet boundary with one of them. We discuss two microscopic descriptions of these defects: fermions coupled to a quantum-mechanical rotor degree of freedom; and an abelian gauge theory that realises symmetric mass generation in a half-space.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2605.13952,
  title  = {Non-Invertible Symmetries and Boundaries for Two-Dimensional Fermions},
  author = {Guillermo Arias-Tamargo and Philip Boyle Smith and Rishi Mouland and Maxwell L. Velásquez Cotini Hutt},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2605.13952},
  year   = {2026}
}

Comments

48 pages + appendices