English

Average Categorical Symmetries in One-Dimensional Disordered Systems

Disordered Systems and Neural Networks 2026-02-11 v1 Statistical Mechanics Strongly Correlated Electrons

Abstract

We study one-dimensional disordered systems with average non-invertible symmetries, where quenched disorder may locally break part of the symmetry while preserving it upon disorder averaging. A canonical example is the random transverse-field Ising model, which at criticality exhibits an average Kramers-Wannier duality. We consider the general setting in which the full symmetry is described by a GG-graded fusion category B\mathcal{B}, whose identity component A\mathcal{A} remains exact, while the components with nontrivial GG-grading are realized either exactly or only on average. We develop a topological holographic framework that encodes the symmetry data of the 1D system in a 2D topological order Z[A]\mathcal{Z}[\mathcal{A}] (the Drinfeld center of A\mathcal{A}), enriched by an exact or, respectively, average GG symmetry. Within this framework, we obtain a complete classification of anomalies and average symmetry-protected topological (SPT) phases: when the components with nontrivial GG-grading are realized only on average, the symmetry is anomaly-free if and only if Z[A]\mathcal{Z}[\mathcal{A}] admits a magnetic Lagrangian algebra that is invariant under the permutation action of GG on anyons. When an anomaly is present, we show that the ground state of a single disorder realization is long-range entangled with probability one in the thermodynamic limit, and is expected to exhibit power-law Griffiths singularities in the low-energy spectrum. Finally, we present an explicit, exactly solvable lattice model based on a symmetry-enriched string-net construction. It yields trivial ground state ensemble in the anomaly-free case, and exhibits exotic low-energy behavior in the presence of an average anomaly.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2602.09083,
  title  = {Average Categorical Symmetries in One-Dimensional Disordered Systems},
  author = {Yabo Li and Meng Cheng and Ruochen Ma},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2602.09083},
  year   = {2026}
}

Comments

29+5 pages, 7 figures

R2 v1 2026-07-01T10:28:37.926Z