Graduate Theory Seminar - Ho Tat Lam - “Dipolar Symmetry-Protected Topological Phases and Tensor Gauge Theories”

Dipole symmetry is an example of modulated symmetries whose symmetry generators do not commute with translations but exhibit spatial modulations. It naturally couples to tensor gauge fields, generalizing the conventional vector gauge fields. In this talk, we will discuss topological phases protected by dipole symmetries and propose a classification of them. This classification can also be viewed as a classification of the response tensor gauge theories that generalize the Dijgraaf-Witten theories and the Chern-Simons theories. Along the way, we will discuss a new type of matrix product states and a generalized notion of symmetries, dubbed “bundle symmetries”.