SciPost Submission Page
SymTFT construction of gapless exotic-foliated dual models
by Fabio Apruzzi, Francesco Bedogna, Salvo Mancani
This is not the latest submitted version.
Submission summary
| Authors (as registered SciPost users): | Salvatore Mancani |
| Submission information | |
|---|---|
| Preprint Link: | https://arxiv.org/abs/2504.11449v2 (pdf) |
| Date submitted: | Aug. 5, 2025, 10:38 a.m. |
| Submitted by: | Salvatore Mancani |
| Submitted to: | SciPost Physics |
| Ontological classification | |
|---|---|
| Academic field: | Physics |
| Specialties: |
|
| Approach: | Theoretical |
Abstract
We construct Symmetry Topological Field Theories (SymTFTs) for continuous subsystem symmetries, which are inherently non-Lorentz-invariant. Our framework produces dual bulk descriptions -- gapped foliated and exotic SymTFTs -- that generate gapless boundary theories with spontaneous subsystem symmetry breaking via interval compactification. In analogy with the sandwich construction of SymTFT, we call this Mille-feuille. This is done by specifying gapped and symmetry-breaking boundary conditions. In this way we obtain the foliated dual realizations of various models, including the XY plaquette, XYZ cube, and $\phi$, $\hat{\phi}$ theories. This also captures self-duality symmetries as condensation defects and provides a systematic method for generating free theories that non-linearly realize subsystem symmetries.
Author indications on fulfilling journal expectations
- Provide a novel and synergetic link between different research areas.
- Open a new pathway in an existing or a new research direction, with clear potential for multi-pronged follow-up work
- Detail a groundbreaking theoretical/experimental/computational discovery
- Present a breakthrough on a previously-identified and long-standing research stumbling block
Current status:
Reports on this Submission
Strengths
Weaknesses
Report
The paper studies the SymTFTs associated with continuous subsystem symmetries. The resulting SymTFTs take the form of foliated (or exotic) field theories. The authors use four representative models as illustrative examples: the XY-plaquette model, the XYZ-cube model, the $\phi$-model, and the $\hat{\phi}$-model, following mainly Refs.\,[48], [49], and [51].
We note that what the authors call the XYZ-cube model'' is referred to as theXY-cube model'' in the existing literature.
The main contribution of the paper is to introduce some foliated/exotic field theories as the bulk theories, impose gapped boundary conditions on the symmetry boundary and gapless boundary conditions on the physical boundary, and show that the resulting SymTFTs correspond to the XY-plaquette model, the XYZ-cube model, the $\phi$-model, and the $\hat{\phi}$-model.
I find the results presented in the manuscript interesting and recommend the publication of the paper after some revisions. I have several questions for the authors:
- The method used to impose the gapped boundary condition leads to a particular choice of gapped boundary. Is there a way to obtain alternative gapped boundary conditions, for example by manipulating the bulk theory using dualities or symmetry actions? If the resulting theory is related to the original one (e.g.\ via gauging), can the authors comment on this?
- Determining topological boundary conditions of a foliated field theory is a crucial but challenging problem. For the bulk foliated theory considered in the paper, do the authors have ideas on how to determine at least some classes of gapped boundary conditions?
- Since all four models discussed arise from lattice constructions, could the authors provide comments on the implications of their SymTFT analysis for the corresponding lattice models?
In addition, some of the notation appears to be conventional to the paper and would benefit from clearer explanation to improve readability.
The following are some minor issues:
- Page 5, Eq.(2.1):
$M_{d}+1$'' in the integration domain should be$M_{d+1}$''. - Page 5, line after Eq.(2.1):
$b_{d-p-1}$ and $c_{p+1}$ are $\mathbb{R}$-valued gauge field'' should begauge fields''. - Eq.(3.19) should read
$$ \mathcal{L}=\frac{\hat{\mu}{0}}{12}(\partial -\frac{\hat{\mu}}{4}(\partial_{k}\hat{\phi}^{k(ij)})^{2}. $$}\hat{\phi}^{i(jk)})^{2The description involving $\hat{\phi}$ uses many indices and conventions; a clearer explanation of these notations would help the reader.
- Page 18, line before Eq.(4.34):
See 3'' should readSee Figure 3''. - Page 20, after Section title 4.2.1:
XY-cube'' should beXY-plaquette model''.
Requested changes
See report
Recommendation
Ask for minor revision
Report
This work is a natural generalization in this field and will help the further study of gapless models, or spontaneous symmetry breaking phases, with subsystem symmetries. However, I hope the authors can clarify the following points in the requested changes.
Requested changes
The SymTFT gains its power at separating the symmetrical and dynamical data at different boundaries, and is universal for different models if the symmetry is given. In this paper the authors only studied one specific choice of boundary condition that is used to reproduce the models reviewed in section 3. This may diminish this article's significance and impact. Therefore, I hope the authors can address the following questions:
- Is it easy to study or classify different topological boundary conditions (e.g. Dirichlet or Neumann) using Mille-feuille method?
- What is the bulk operator that implement the change of boundary conditions? (Is it the condensation operator?)
- What is the dual models after changing a different boundary conditions?
- Usually the condensation operators obeys noninvertible fusion rules. What is the fusion rules in this case?
- Does the Mille-feuille method help us understand the UV-IR mixing related to subsystem symmetry? For example, after Eq (4.20), the authors claimed "For instance, we required scale invariance when constructing the physical boundary, not allowing for some terms that, due to UV/IR mixing, will contribute to the energy at leading order. As a consequence, the energy of our ground state is shifted. " Can you give the details of this?
At least, I hope the authors can clarify the questions in the example related to XY-plaquette models.
Recommendation
Ask for major revision
1 - 3) We will adress the answers to question 1 to 3 all together. It is indeed possible to utilize the SymTFT Mille-feuille construction to classify the possible gapped boundary condition. This can be done at various levels, for example by modifying by hand the modes living on the gapped boundary from compact to non-compact, or by analyzing which bulk operators can end, or finally by constructing the condensation defects of the bulk and projecting them onto a given gapped boundary, in order to generate the others. We added a comment about these cases in section 4.1, pag. 18, though it is not clear to us if this exhaustively classify all the possible gapped boundary conditions, and thereby all the global variants of exotic/foliated dual models. While definitely interesting and needed for an exhaustive understanding of subsystem symmetries, this problem goes beyond the scope of the paper, which focuses in constructing a first instance of gapless foliated/exotic duality, and we leave the boundary classification for future research.
4) The condensation defects for both exotic and foliated models have a rich structure and open technical problems. We are working on a follow-up specifically devoted to these defects. We can anticipate that indeed their fusion rules are non-invertible, when they are supported on surfaces with boundaries. The one constructed in this manuscript in sec 4.1.2 was a naive attempt and we prefer removing it (along with its reference in the abstract), which was beyond the main scope of the work. It does not diminishes the value of this work, as the main message, i.e. gapless duality, is solid.
5) We clarified the statement after eq. 20. Its goal is to compare the results of our work with the one in reference [76], and highlight the fact that the two overlap. In constructing their models, they turn on some higher derivative terms for the exotic theory, but they are forced to remove them by taking appropriate limits of their couplings, for the gapless duality to hold. We wanted to stress the fact that, despite being higher-derivatives, such terms contribute to the energy of the modes in the infrared, due to UV/IR mixing, as discussed in detail in reference [48]. We put precise indications on where to find this information in both works.

Author: Salvatore Mancani on 2026-02-06 [id 6305]
(in reply to Report 2 on 2025-12-08)Answers to questions 1 - 2) We added a comment at the end of section 4.1, pag 18, stressing the fact that one could choose different topological boundary conditions and change the set of topological operators of the bulk that can end on the boundary, as well as the global variants of the dual exotic/foliated theories after interval compactification. For example, in the mille-feuille construction, one can use condensation defects on the bulk and project them to the gapped boundary, in order to change the gapped boundary condition. It is not clear to us on how to classify all boundary conditions and we leave this as an open problem, needed to thoroughly understand subsystem symmetries.
Answer to question 3) Our SymTFT analysis lead us to constructing gapless foliated/exotic dual models. We believe that the results of this analysis can help in constructing the corresponding lattices for such dual models, in particular for the foliated description of the boundary theories.
We thank the referee for the typos he highlighted to us, we corrected all of them, along with some others we found.
Regarding the notation, we tried to stick to the conventions of the references. We tried to clarify the notation used in Eq. 4.25 and 4.44 (which appears many times throughout the work), adding a comment below them.