Fracton superfluid hydrodynamics

Abstract

We examine the hydrodynamics of systems with spontaneously broken multipolar symmetries using a systematic effective field theory. We focus on the simplest non-trivial setting: a system with charge and dipole symmetry, but without momentum conservation. When no symmetries are broken, our formalism reproduces the quartic subdiffusion ($\omega \sim -i k^4$) characteristic of `fracton hydrodynamics' with conserved dipole moment. Our formalism also captures spontaneous breaking of charge and/or dipole symmetry. When charge symmetry is spontaneously broken, the hydrodynamic modes are quadratically propagating and quartically relaxing ($\omega \sim \pm k^2 - ik^4$). When the dipole symmetry is spontaneously broken but the charge symmetry is preserved, then we find quadratically relaxing (diffusive) transverse modes, plus another mode which depending on parameters may be either purely diffusive ($\omega \sim -i k^2$) or quadratically propagating and quadratically relaxing ($\omega \sim \pm k^2 -i k^2$). Our work provides concrete predictions that may be tested in near-term cold atom experiments, and also lays out a general framework that may be applied to study systems with spontaneously broken multipolar symmetries.