Critical drag is thus a mechanism for resistivity that, unlike conventional mechanisms, is unrelated to broken symmetries. We furthermore argue that an emergent symmetry that has the appropriate mixed anomaly with electric charge is in fact an inevitable consequence of compressibility in systems with lattice translation symmetry. Critical drag therefore seems to be the only way (other than through irrelevant perturbations breaking the emergent symmetry, that disappear at the renormalization group fixed point) to get nonzero resistivity in such systems. Finally, we present a very simple and concrete model -- the "Quantum Lifshitz Model" -- that illustrates the critical drag mechanism as well as the other considerations of the paper.
The study of topological superconductivity is largely based on the analysis of mean-field Hamiltonians that violate particle number conservation and have only short-range interactions. Although this approach has been very successful, it is not clear that it captures the topological properties of real superconductors, which are described by number-conserving Hamiltonians with long-range interactions. To address this issue, we study topological superconductivity directly in the number-conserving setting.
Fractons are a new type of quasiparticle which are immobile in isolation, but can often move by forming bound states. Fractons are found in a variety of physical settings, such as spin liquids and elasticity theory, and exhibit unusual phenomenology, such as gravitational physics and localization. The past several years have seen a surge of interest in these exotic particles, which have come to the forefront of modern condensed matter theory. In this review, we provide a broad treatment of fractons, ranging from pedagogical introductory material to discussions of recent advances in the field. We begin by demonstrating how the fracton phenomenon naturally arises as a consequence of higher moment conservation laws, often accompanied by the emergence of tensor gauge theories. We then provide a survey of fracton phases in spin models, along with the various tools used to characterize them, such as the foliation framework. We discuss in detail the manifestation of fracton physics in elasticity theory, as well as the connections of fractons with localization and gravitation. Finally, we provide an overview of some recently proposed platforms for fracton physics, such as Majorana islands and hole-doped antiferromagnets. We conclude with some open questions and an outlook on the field.