English

Strings as Hyper-Fractons

High Energy Physics - Theory 2025-10-10 v3 Strongly Correlated Electrons Mathematical Physics math.MP

Abstract

We systematically examine all possible Gauss laws obeying spatial rotation symmetry, characterising the corresponding conserved charges. In the case of conserved higher moments, this gives rise to fractonic behaviour. We show that many Gauss laws, including those arising from pp-form electrodynamics, in fact, produce an infinite tower of conserved moments, which we dub hyper-fractonic. In hyper-fractonic systems, a finite number of charged particles cannot be mobile due to an inability of fulfilling the infinite number of conservation laws with a finite number of degrees of freedom. Instead, mobile charged objects must have an infinite number of degrees of freedom. In particular, the strings and branes naturally coupling to pp-form potentials provide an example of hyper-fractonic matter.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2410.11678,
  title  = {Strings as Hyper-Fractons},
  author = {Erica Bertolini and Hyungrok Kim},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2410.11678},
  year   = {2025}
}

Comments

20 pages. v3: expanded discussion, acceptted for publication in JHEP

R2 v1 2026-06-28T19:22:43.750Z