Foliated fracton order from gauging subsystem symmetries

Abstract

Based on several previous examples, we summarize explicitly the general procedure to gauge models with subsystem symmetries, which are symmetries with generators that have support within a sub-manifold of the system. The gauging process can be applied to any local quantum model on a lattice that is invariant under the subsystem symmetry. We focus primarily on simple 3D paramagnetic states with planar symmetries. For these systems, the gauged theory may exhibit foliated fracton order and we find that the species of symmetry charges in the paramagnet directly determine the resulting foliated fracton order. Moreover, we find that gauging linear subsystem symmetries in 2D or 3D models results in a self-duality similar to gauging global symmetries in 1D.