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Xiao-Gang Wen

Xiao-Gang Wen, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
A holographic view of symmetry — symmetry as shadow of topological order

Recently, the notion of symmetry has been extended from 0-symmetry described by group to higher symmetry described by higher group. In this talk, we show that the notion of symmetry can be generalized even further to "algebraic higher symmetry". Then we will describe an even more general point of view of symmetry, which puts the (generalized) symmetry charges and topological excitation at equal footing: symmetry can be viewed as gravitational anomaly, or symmetry can be viewed as shadow topological order in one higher dimension. This picture allows us to see many duality relations between seeming unrelated symmetries.

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