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Fracton phases are gapped quantum phases in three dimensions that go beyond the standard paradigm of topological order; they have fractionalized excitations that are immobile or only mobile along lower-dimensional subsystems, such as lines or planes. While there are several exactly solvable models of such fracton phases, these models are far from realistic because they involve interactions between many spins at the same time. By generalizing the fermionic parton construction, a standard phenomenological description of fractionalization in quantum phases, we provide simple variational states capturing fracton phases. Moreover, by showing that each variational state is the asymptotic strong-coupling ground state of a corresponding coupled-spin-chain model, we demonstrate that a large class of fracton phases can be realized in more realistic models involving only two-spin interactions.

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Gabor Halasz, KITP
Seminar Room 0.03, ETP
Contact: Simon Trebst