Recent progress in our understanding of symmetries of quantum fields indicates these are encoded by a collection of topological membranes of various dimensionality, encoding the conserved quantum numbers of extended operators. One feature of topological membranes is that they can form intricated networks of topological junctions, which give generalized symmetries a higher structure. The higher structure has physical implications, for example in the form of selection rules, anomalies, and generalized Ward identities. In this talk, after introducing these ideas, I will discuss some recent progress in characterizing the higher structure of the symmetries of axion-Maxwell theory as a concrete example.
Based on an upcoming work with Matteo Dell’Acqua, Shani Nadir Meynet and Elias Riedel-Gårding.
Michele Del Zotto (Uppsala): Exploring the higher structure of symmetries
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- DelZotto_4_June_2024.pdf 229 KB
