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Supernematic

Strongly Correlated Electrons 2025-12-17 v2 Combinatorics Quantum Physics

Abstract

Quantum theory of geometrically frustrated systems is usually approached as a gauge theory where the local conservation law becomes the Gauss law. Here we show that it can do something fundamentally different: enforce a global conserved quantity via a non-perturbative tiling invariant, rigorously linking microscopic geometry to a new macroscopically phase-coherent state. In a frustrated bosonic model on the honeycomb lattice in the cluster-charging regime at fractional filling, this mechanism protects a conserved global quantum number, the sublattice polarization N~=NANB\tilde{N} = N_A - N_B. Quantum fluctuation drives the spontaneous symmetry breaking of this global U(1) symmetry to result in a supernematic (SN) phase -- an incompressible yet phase-coherent quantum state that breaks rotational symmetry without forming a superfluid or realizing topological order. This establishes a route to a novel quantum many-body state driven by combinatorial constraints.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2511.10642,
  title  = {Supernematic},
  author = {Dan Mao and Eun-Ah Kim},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2511.10642},
  year   = {2025}
}

Comments

17 + 7 pages, 9 + 7 figures

R2 v1 2026-07-01T07:36:24.538Z