Fractionalization as an alternate to charge ordering in electronic insulators
Seth Musser, Meng Cheng, T. Senthil · Physical review. B./Physical review. B · 2025
Who ordered anyons? Though exotic, anyons can be required by a system's fractional symmetry response. For example, in gapped systems with U(1) and unbroken translation symmetry, fractional lattice filling leads to anyons via the LSM constraint. The authors analyze here this setting and, for a given filling, determine the minimal number of required anyons. They prove this minimal topological order is unique and dub it a ``quantum charge liquid'' (QCL). The authors conclude by discussing the phenomenology of QCLs.