Exponential Symmetry Creates a ‘Disorder-Free Quantum Glass

Yu-Min Hu of the Max Planck Institute for the Physics of Complex Systems, alongside colleagues at Harvard University and Princeton University, have identified a novel quantum state of matter exhibiting a large number of ground states. Their work studies a one-dimensional spin model possessing an exponential U(1) symmetry where charge decays as 2 to the power of negative j, with site position j. As a result of their findings, they demonstrate that in a lattice of length L, this condensate possesses approximately 2 to the power of L spontaneous symmetry-breaking ground states originating from the approximately 2 to the power of L number…