HEP Theory Journal Club

Generalized Global Symmetries

Tal Sheaffer

McGill

Familiar global symmetries, which act on local operators (e.g. particles), could be thought of as the p=0 case of a more general class of p-form symmetries. These higher-form symmetries, described in arXiv:1412.5148 and section 8 of arXiv:1810.05338, are necessarily Abelian and act on extended objects like strings and branes. Some long-studied topics such as the stability of flux tubes in QCD, crucial in explaining confinement, can be reinterpreted from the viewpoint of p-form symmetries. I will define them and discuss examples, such as Z(N) symmetry in QCD, ‘electric’ and ‘magnetic’ symmetries in free Maxwell theory, Z(k) for U(1) Chern-Simons theory at level k etc.