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# Short-ranged RVB physics, quantum dimer models and Ising gauge theories

## I Introduction

The question posed by high-temperature superconductivity is how a Mott insulator becomes superconducting upon doping. As the insulator is itself, at low energies, also an antiferromagnet hostile to the motion of holes, much work has been based on the notion that the doped state is best approached from a “nearby” insulating state that lacks long range order, i.e. a spin liquid. The doped spin liquid is then argued to become superconducting.

The simplest such scenario casts the resonating valence bond (RVB) state proposed in 1973 by Anderson in the role of the spin liquid. Pairs of electrons form singlet (valence) bonds, a superposition of which yields a liquidlike, non-Neel ground state. Holes doped into this state undergo spin-charge separation. The charge degrees of freedom, able to move freely through the spin-liquid, become superconducting upon Bose condensation. The spin excitations are understood as composites of spin-$`\frac{1}{2}`$ spinons and the decay of the electron into holon and spinon provides a natural explanation of the broad quasiparticle spectra seen over much of the normal state of the cuprates.

RVB scenarios themselves cover a broad range of possibilities. The short-ranged (SR) flavour of RVB stays close to Anderson’s original vision by including valence bonds only between electrons located in a small neighbourhood of one another leads to gapped spinons . Its low energy dynamics is believed to be captured by the quantum dimer model (QDM) introduced in Ref. , where a VB is represented by a dimer linking the two electrons which form it. Historically, the short-ranged RVB was abandoned when the QDM failed to lead to a spin liquid on the square lattice – it typically leads to a columnar state – and was considered suspect for building in a spin gap (i.e. a gap to triplet excitations) that was not in evidence at optimal doping; subsequent to the identification of the pseudogap regime and the discovery of stripes these “defects” seem less compelling although the problem of describing the collapse of the spin gap with doping is still unsolved in this approach as is the still basic problem of solving for the physics of a finite density of dopants.

In contrast the long-ranged RVB versions have received gauge theoretic treatments based on $`U(1)`$ and $`SU(2)`$ reformulations of the Heisenberg model that can give rise to a gapless mean-field spinon spectrum. While the broad similarity between the mean-field phase diagrams constructed early on, and the phase diagram of generic cuprate superconductors is striking, assessing the impact of fluctuations has been difficult. In particular, the general belief that such gauge theories cannot give rise to deconfined phases in 2+1 dimensions is at odds with the program of finding a proximate fractionalized spin liquid.

Recently, Senthil and Fisher (SF), building on earlier work by Balents et al., have proposed to get around this by reformulating the problem as an Ising gauge theory. As Ising gauge theories do have deconfined phases in 2+1 dimensions, this seems quite promising. What is not clear from their work, is exactly what microscopic degrees of freedom are described by the Ising gauge fields. SF have offered two separate justifications for the presence of Ising gauge fields. First, that a four fermion Heisenberg interaction can be decoupled by means of an Ising gauge field and second, that in models with separate electronic and superconducting degrees of freedom, the latter can screen the charge of the former upto a sign ambiguity in defining the needed square root of the cooper pair operator. The former seems to us to be an interesting and exact microscopic statement, but inconclusive regarding the nature of the low energy theory; this point has also been made recently by Hastings and we will give a trivial example to illustrate this point later in the paper. The second justification builds in the physics invoked in earlier work, namely the capacity of a superconducting condensate to screen charge and turn quasiparticles into spinons, but it does appear puzzling that it holds into insulating phases as hypothesized by SF. In addition SF have argued that a deconfined phase involving Ising gauge fields must be characterized by the notion of topological order invoked in studies of the quantum Hall effect and that this order can be directly detected in an experiment.

In this paper we attempt to shed some light on these issues by showing that at least one realization of Ising gauge physics is exactly the physics of the short ranged RVB. We will do this by formulating the QDM description of the latter as an odd Ising gauge theory, a term we will explain in Sect. III below. In this we will offer a variation on previous work by Fradkin and Kivelson who mapped the problem onto a $`U(1)`$ gauge theory instead. This builds on a completely differently motivated stream of work of two of us (with P. Chandra) on frustrated quantum Ising models which has included a recent demonstration that the quantum dimer model on a triangular lattice supports an RVB phase. This connection will allow us to interpret various statements about Ising gauge theories in the language of valence bonds – it will turn out that the Ising variable is the number of valence bonds – and, we hope, make them easier to grasp and evaluate. We should note that alternative identifications of spin liquid physics with Ising gauge theories in different limits have been made previously implicitly by Read and Chakraborty, and explicitly by Read, Sachdev, Jalbert and Vojta, Wen, and Mudry and Fradkin.

A second benefit of this exploration is that it focusses attention on what it takes to get an Ising gauge description of the low energy dynamics, namely a binary link variable and a local constraint. If SF are correct and the Ising description has general applicablity, it should be possible to make comparable identifications in other contexts.

In the balance of the paper, we will review the QDM description of valence bond phases, describe the reformulation of the QDM as an Ising gauge theory and of general Ising gauge theories as generalised dimer models (GDMs), collate the known results on these models, discuss the notion of topological order in their context and conclude with a brief summary. As much of the interest of the paper lies in the connection between QDMs and Ising gauge theories, we have felt it useful to review a number of known results on both. It is useful perhaps to list the results that are new to this paper. These are the formulation of the QDM as an Ising gauge theory (Section III), the introduction of the odd Ising gauge theory and its QDM limit (Section IV) and its identification with the action including a Polyakov loop (PL) term written down by SF (Section IVB and Appendix B), the (elementary) treatment of Ising gauge theories in $`d=1`$ including the presence of fractionalization in the odd case, the rationalisation of the QDM results on the square and triangular lattices via the absence or presence of charge-2 Higgs fields (Section VB) and the discussion of topological order in Ising gauge theories (Section VI).

## II Valence bond phases and quantum dimer models

Consider an insulating magnet with enhanced quantum fluctuations (as is the case with $`S=1/2`$ and other “small” values of the spin) and competing interactions that frustrate any Neel ordering that would be deduced from a semiclassical analysis. In the extreme case where any residual order is extremely short ranged, there is a reasonable expectation that the system will construct its ground state from configurations in which all spins are paired in nearest neighbour valence bonds. By continuity, we expect that there will be nearby Hamiltonians for which valence bonds of finite length will suffice and these are expected to share their basic physics with the purely nearest neighbour case. As there is still a large number of short ranged valence bond states possible, even with the restriction to this sector there is a non-trivial problem remaining – that of diagonalizing the Hamiltonian within this highly degenerate manifold – which is the problem of “resonance”. Depending on the details of the Hamiltonian, several phases might be realized. This set of phases are what we call (short ranged) valence bond dominated phases and, by hypothesis, they are all characterized by a spin gap.

There are two primary obstacles to investigating the physics of valence bond dominated phases which we will restrict, in the remaining, to those with purely nearest neighbor bonds. The first is basic, namely the large degeneracy cited before, e.g. on the square and triangular lattices in $`d=2`$ there are $`e^{\alpha N}`$ ($`\alpha >0`$) states on an $`N`$ site lattice. The second is technical in that different valence bond configurations are not orthogonal, although their overlap is effectively exponentially small in the number of dimers in which they differ. In some cases, there is also a proof that they are linearly independent.

To deal with the second problem it is convenient to formulate an expansion that can include the non-orthogonality perturbatively. As the parent configurations are in one-to-one correspondence with hard core dimer coverings of the various lattices, such a tack leads to a quantum dimer model.

The sites the electrons reside on define the direct lattice. The Hilbert space of the QDM thus consists of all hardcore dimer coverings of the direct lattice. The QDM Hamiltonian for the insulating case (half-filling) consists of two parts, a kinetic ($`\widehat{T}`$) and a potential ($`\widehat{V}`$) one. The former is off-diagonal and generates the resonance plaquette moves between different dimer configurations, whereas the latter, diagonal one, counts the number of plaquettes able to participate in such resonance moves.

For the square lattice we find the Hamiltonian

$`H_{QDM}=t\widehat{T}+v\widehat{V}=`$ (1)
$`{\displaystyle \underset{\mathrm{}}{}}`$ $`\{t(|\text{}\text{}|+h.c.)+v(|\text{}\text{}|+|\text{}\text{}|)\},`$ (2)
where we have kept only the simplest kinetic and potential energy terms with coefficients $`t`$ and $`v`$, and the sum $`_{\mathrm{}}`$ runs over all plaquettes. In what follows, we refer to the QDM with $`v0`$ as the extended QDM, whereas QDM on its own refers to the case $`v=0`$. On other lattices $`\widehat{T}`$ will take the form of a sum of resonance moves on the shortest even loop (which is a plaquette in this case) and $`\widehat{V}`$ will be count the number of such possible moves in a given configurations, e.g. on the honeycomb lattice both will involve three dimers.

There are two main paths for obtaining a quantum dimer model from a magnetic system. The first is based directly on an $`SU(2)`$ Heisenberg magnet, the second on “large-N” generalisations thereof. The former uses the abovementioned small overlap to generate a perturbation expansion. The valence bond states can be labeled by orthogonalised dimer configurations, the quantum dynamics of which is captured by the leading order dimer plaquette resonance move, $`\widehat{T}`$. The leading order diagonal term is given by $`\widehat{V}`$. The second path generalises the $`SU(2)Sp(1)`$ to $`SU(N)`$ on bipartite lattices or $`Sp(N)`$ generally. The latter method essentially generalizes the Schwinger boson representation for the spins by introducing a large number of additional boson flavours. In the limit $`N\mathrm{}`$, taken at a fixed number of bosons per site, the ground states at leading order can be labelled by dimer configurations. It is the next order, $`1/N`$, terms which generate the abovementioned dimer resonance move.

## III The quantum dimer model as an Ising gauge theory

In the following, we discuss the relationships between a number of different models of interest in the context of high-temperature superconductivity and quantum magnetism. The naming conventions for them are depicted in Fig. 1. Our first mapping – of the QDM to an Ising gauge theory (IGT) – proceeds as follows. The naive Hilbert space (inclusive of gauge equivalent states) of any IGT is defined by an Ising variable $`\sigma =\pm 1`$ on each link of the lattice; each variable will be taken to be the eigenvalue of an operator $`\widehat{\sigma }^x`$ on the corresponding link. We can identify the link variable with the presence or absence of a dimer on the link, i.e. the number of dimers on each link is now given by $`n=(1+\sigma )/2`$ and the dimer number operators are $`\widehat{n}=\frac{1}{2}(1+\widehat{\sigma }^x)`$, where we have suppressed the link index.

Evidently, the naive Hilbert space is too big and we must identify the physical subspace that corresponds to allowed hardcore dimer coverings, which is done by imposing a constraint at every site that only one link emanating from it be occupied by a dimer. This is expressed as an operation, $`\widehat{G}`$, which leaves invariant only the physical states, $`|\mathrm{phys}`$, those fulfilling the hardcore condition. In terms of the operators $`\widehat{\sigma }^x`$, the hardcore constraint becomes:

$`{\displaystyle \underset{+}{}}\widehat{\sigma }^x|\mathrm{phys}=(n_c+2)|\mathrm{phys},`$ (4)
where the sum is over all the links emanating from a given site $`i`$, and $`n_c`$ is the coordination of that site. This implies

$$\widehat{G}_\alpha |\mathrm{phys}=|\mathrm{phys}$$
(5)
where

$$\widehat{G}_\alpha \mathrm{exp}\left(i\alpha \underset{+}{}(\widehat{\sigma }^x+12/n_c)\right)$$
(6)
for any $`\alpha `$ at each site.

To write the Hamiltonian at half filling, $`\widehat{H}_I`$, in a form such that $`[\widehat{G},\widehat{H}_I]=0`$, we define the usual spin-half raising and lowering operators $`\widehat{\sigma }^\pm =\widehat{\sigma }^y\pm i\widehat{\sigma }^z`$, which respectively add and remove a dimer on a link. We obtain:

$`\widehat{H}_I`$ $`=`$ $`t\widehat{T}+v\widehat{V}=t{\displaystyle \underset{\mathrm{}}{}}(\widehat{\sigma }^+\widehat{\sigma }^{}\widehat{\sigma }^+\widehat{\sigma }^{}+h.c.)`$ (8)
$`+{\displaystyle \frac{v}{4}}{\displaystyle \underset{\mathrm{}}{}}\left((1+\widehat{\sigma }_1^x)(1+\widehat{\sigma }_3^x)+(1+\widehat{\sigma }_2^x)(1+\widehat{\sigma }_4^x)\right),`$
where the sites in the last term are labelled sequentially around the plaquette, $`\mathrm{}`$. The generalization to other lattices follows the prescription for writing down QDMs outlined earlier.

Invariance of $`\widehat{H}_I`$ under local Ising gauge operations is easily checked. In fact a larger, $`U(1)`$, symmetry arises because $`\widehat{G}_\alpha ^1\widehat{\sigma }^\pm \widehat{G}_\alpha =\mathrm{exp}(\pm i\alpha )\widehat{\sigma }^\pm `$ so that the phases picked up by the products in $`\widehat{T}`$ cancel. As we will discuss further below, this local $`U(1)`$ is a consequence of local dimer number conservation. So we have the situation that while the Hilbert space is that of an Ising gauge theory, the physical states and Hamiltonian are invariant under a set of continuous local gauge transformations that have the form of a $`U(1)`$ gauge theory. This is a local gauge theory version of the more familiar quantum $`S=1/2`$ XY-model, which also lives in an Ising Hilbert space.

When holes are doped into the valence bond manifold, we need to worry about the comparison of the (potentially) large hole hopping energy $`t`$ to the existing magnetic scales that are responsible for the triplet gap. In the spirit of RVB theory, we assume that one can approach the problem from small values of $`t`$ and that it is therefore sufficient to keep states in which the spins pair up into valence bonds except at the sites from which they have been removed. The effect of the hole kinetic energy is to move a hole and a dimer in ways that keep within this manifold.

In the Ising gauge language, we have to add a matter (Higgs) part, $`\widehat{H}_m`$, to the Hamiltonian. Let the Ising Higgs field be denoted by an operator $`\widehat{\tau }_x`$ its eigenvalues $`\pm 1`$ denoting the presence/absence of a hole. Since each site has either a dimer ending on it or is occupied by a hole, the constraint equation is modified to

$`\widehat{G}|\mathrm{phys}`$ $`=`$ $`\mathrm{exp}\left(i\alpha (\widehat{\tau }_x+{\displaystyle \underset{\mathrm{}}{}}(\widehat{\sigma }^x+11/n_c))\right)|\mathrm{phys}`$ (9)
$`=`$ $`|\mathrm{phys},`$ (10)
and the full Hamiltonian is given by $`\widehat{H}=\widehat{H}_I+\widehat{H}_m`$, with

$`\widehat{H}_m=m{\displaystyle \underset{(ijk)}{}}(\widehat{\tau }_i^{}\widehat{\sigma }_{ij}^+\widehat{\sigma }_{jk}^{}\widehat{\tau }_k^++h.c.),`$ (11)
and the sum on $`(ijk)`$ running over triplets of neighbouring sites.

## IV Ising gauge theories as generalized dimer models

We now review the converse logic of starting with the more familiar action of the standard IGT (referred to as even IGT from hereon) and ending up with a Hamiltonian formulation. The resulting theory is a generalized dimer model (GDM) which features dimers on links that obey a generalized dimer constraint – in the even case this requires an even number of dimers to emanate from each site. We also show that the addition of the Polyakov loop term $`S_P`$ to the standard action introduced by SF leads to a Hamiltonian formulation that is a GDM with the constraint of an odd number of dimers per site and that in a special limit, it reduces to precisely a quantum dimer model with the hard core dimer constraint.

### A Hamiltonian vs. Lagrangian formulation

Consider the action of the standard IGT, hereafter referred to as the even IGT,

$$S=K^\tau \underset{\mathrm{}}{}\sigma ^z\sigma ^z\sigma ^z\sigma ^zK^s\underset{\mathrm{}}{}\sigma ^z\sigma ^z\sigma ^z\sigma ^z.$$
(12)
made anisotropic by choosing a coupling, $`K^\tau `$, for plaquettes containing links in the imaginary time (temporal) direction, different from that for purely spatial plaquettes, $`K^s`$. This is neccessary to take the time continuum limit needed in the derivation of the Hamiltonian.

We can now choose a gauge wherein all $`\sigma ^z`$ in the time direction are +1, so that the first term in Eq. 12 becomes a simple bilinear, $`K^\tau _{\mathrm{}}\sigma ^z\sigma ^z`$, involving only the links in the space directions. (Strictly speaking, it is not possible to do this as it would have the effect of modifying the gauge invariant products of $`\sigma ^z`$ along temporal loops. However this obstruction is not important in the time continuum limit in the case of the even IGT at $`T=0`$.) One then establishes the equivalence to an appropriate Hamiltonian and set of constraints in one dimension less by comparing the expressions for the partition function generated by this action to that arising from a Trotter-Suzuki decomposed path integral formulation generated by the Hamiltonian

$$\widehat{H}_{GDM}=\mathrm{\Gamma }\underset{}{}\widehat{\sigma }^x\kappa \underset{\mathrm{}}{}\widehat{\sigma }^z\widehat{\sigma }^z\widehat{\sigma }^z\widehat{\sigma }^z,$$
(13)
where the first sum runs over all links and the Hilbert space is limited by constraints (below). One finds an equivalence of the partition functions in the limit $`K^\tau \mathrm{}`$, with $`K^s=\kappa \mathrm{exp}(2K^\tau )`$ fixed.

The Hamiltonian defined in Eq. 13 retains a gauge invariance under flipping all spins (in the $`\sigma ^z`$ basis) emanating from one site. This transformation is generated by $`\widehat{G}_{\mathrm{IGT}}=_+\widehat{\sigma }^x`$. To reproduce the physics of the even IGT we need to impose $`\widehat{G}_{\mathrm{IGT}}=1`$ at every site.

While the Hamiltonian and Hilbert space are naturally derived in the $`\sigma ^z`$ basis, the meaning of these constraints becomes transparent by considering the system in the $`\sigma ^x`$ basis. For $`\widehat{G}_{\mathrm{IGT}}(i)|\mathrm{phys}=+|\mathrm{phys}`$, an even number of links emanating from site $`i`$ has $`\sigma ^x=1`$. Identifying, as we did in Sect. III, the presence (absence) of a dimer with $`\sigma ^x=\pm 1`$, we see that the constraint $`\widehat{G}_{IGT}=+\widehat{1}`$ implies the presence of an even number of dimers emanating from each site – whence our label “even” for the IGT under consideration.

### B The odd IGT and the Polyakov loop term $`S_P`$

To obtain a Hamiltonian problem in which the physical states have an odd number of dimers at each site (the odd IGT), we need to add the Polyakov loop term to the action above:

$`e^{S_P}={\displaystyle \underset{t}{}}\sigma _t^z,`$ (14)
where the product runs over all temporal links. This is equivalent to assigning a sign to each space-time configuration which is the product of Polyakov loops in the temporal direction that wrap around the system for each spatial site. It can be shown (see Appendix B) that this is equivalent, in the time continuum limit, to choosing $`\widehat{G}_{IGT}=\widehat{1}`$ in picking physical states for the action of the Hamiltonian Eq. 13. We should note, that even with isotropic couplings in the action Eq. 12, $`S_P`$ breaks the symmetry between space and time (lattice Euclidean invariance). Consequently one may need to be careful about distinguishing the behavior of Wilson loops in space and those in time (Polyakov loops) in distinguishing confined and deconfined phases – the latter are then the correct quantity to calculate.

For the square lattice, the inclusion of $`S_P`$ (which arises in the work by SF for a Mott insulator with an odd number of electrons per site) thus represents a mixture of dimers (one link occupied) and tetramers (three). Whereas the dimers are amenable to an obvious physical interpretation as valence bonds, we are not aware of any similar interpretation of more complicated polymers.

We thus see that the somewhat unconventional form of the kinetic term in Eq. 8, which consists of raising and lowering operators, rather than simply $`\widehat{\sigma }^z`$, arises from the desire to preserve the hardcore dimer constraint manifestly.

### C QDM limit of odd IGT

One can nonetheless retrieve the hardcore constraint by explicitly removing the supernumerary dimers ‘by hand’, through a very large coupling constant $`\mathrm{\Gamma }`$. In this limit (the $`\mathrm{\Gamma }\mathrm{}`$ limit), the term $`_{\mathrm{}}\widehat{\sigma }^z`$ becomes equivalent to the kinetic term of Eq. 8; it is in this limit that the IGT of Senthil and Fisher including the $`S_P`$ term is equivalent to our QDM. In this context, it is interesting to note that the original $`U(1)`$ gauge theory of Fradkin and Kivelson is close in spirit to the above construction. There, the presence of a dimer is encoded by an angular momentum variable on each link, $`L_{ij}`$, which is restricted by an analog of the transverse field term to values 0 or 1. The raising and lowering operators (conjugate to the $`\widehat{L}_{ij}`$) appear in the kinetic term $`\widehat{T}`$.

In the presence of doping, there is an additional difference between the two theories which lies in the nature of the allowed hopping terms. The GDM admits terms of the form

$`\widehat{H}_u+\widehat{H}_\lambda =u{\displaystyle \underset{}{}}(\widehat{\tau }_i^+\widehat{\sigma }_{ij}^z\widehat{\tau }_j^{}+h.c.)+\lambda {\displaystyle \underset{.}{}}\tau _i^x,`$ (15)
corresponding to the processes depicted in Fig. 2b. (The sum $`_.`$ runs over all sites of the lattice). Note that a notion of charge conservation and hence a global $`U(1)`$ invariance, mandates the use of $`\widehat{\tau }^\pm `$ operators rather than $`\widehat{\tau }^z`$. In the $`\mathrm{\Gamma }\mathrm{}`$ limit, this term becomes ineffective since one of the two configurations which $`\widehat{H}_u`$ connects is projected out. However, for $`\mathrm{\Gamma }`$ large but not infinite we generate the term $`\widehat{H}_m`$ (Eq. 11) with $`mu^2/\mathrm{\Gamma }`$ to obtain dynamic holes (see Fig. 2).

Quite generally, extended QDMs thus arise as liimits of odd IGTs with additional couplings. ¿From the perspective of IGTs, this is a simplification which focuses attention on the existence of larger local $`U(1)`$ invariance, but not much more. However from the perspective of the physics of antiferromagnets the QDM along with its associated conservation of the number of dimers (valence bonds) per site appears to be the more natural construction. It also has the appeal that it allows two question basic to setting up a gauge theory to be answered transparently: 1) what is the link variable? and 2) what is the local constraint? As we have noted, in the QDM limit this leads to an Ising link variable which is simply the number of valence bonds but a constraint on their number more appropriate to a $`U(1)`$ theory. At the very least, short ranged RVB theory is an example of an IGT of a strongly correlated system and we will use it to examine some of the observations made by SF about IGTs in general. More generally, it seems to us that in order to make the case for an IGT description in other phases, it would be extremely useful to have a comparable identification of the link variable and the constraint (even in some appropriate coarse grained sense).

### D Duality to Ising models in $`d=2+1`$

It is well known that IGTs in $`d=3`$ are dual to Ising models. In the Hamiltonian formulation in $`d=2+1`$, there is a simple, geometrical, way of seeing this which demonstrates how the standard constraint $`G=+1`$ translates into a dual ferromagnetic transverse field Ising model while the alternative constraint $`G=1`$ translates into a fully frustrated Ising model in a transverse field. An account of this mapping is given in Appendix A.

Evidently, it is most economical to study these dual Ising models. An extensive study of frustrated Ising models in $`d=2+1`$ is reported in Ref. .

## V Phase Structure and Quasiparticle Fractionalization

For all the pure (undoped) QDMs, the question of primary interest is whether they possess a dimer liquid or RVB phase. Such a phase automatically leads to free spin-1/2 excitations (spinons) and to the decay of an ejected electron into a spinon and a spinless charged hole (holon) which provides an example of spin-charge separation (in an insulator) in general dimensions.

The physical arguments leading to the above conclusions are simple in the valence bond language. A valence bond can be broken up into two neighboring spins 1/2. In a valence bond liquid the cost of separating these two objects to infinite separation will be finite – hence the existence of a spinon spectrum above the triplet gap. Further, at large separations one can remove one of the spinons to obtain a spinon-holon pair that has the quantum numbers of a missing electron, or hole. Hence in a photoemission experiment one will see a fractionalized spectrum above the charge gap.

Within the framework of the dimer models both spinons and holons are represented by monomers and the issue is one of computing the free energy of the system as a function of monomer seperation. In a liquid phase this will be finite.

It is worth digressing a bit and noting the translation between the standard gauge theory lore and the above statements. The standard diagnostic of confinement in a pure gauge theory is the Wilson loop. In a Lorentz invariant theory its orientation does not matter and hence we may compute the expectation value of a spatial loop as well as a temporal loop which is directly related to the energy of two separated quarks. In dimer models one does not have Lorentz invariance – trivially for we are in the time, but not space, continuum limit and less trivially because the Polyakov loop term is not Lorentz invariant, as already noted. Consequently one should really compute the temporal Wilson loop (the Polyakov loop). Nevertheless, as the following calculation shows, liquidity implies a perimeter law for the spatial Wilson loop, and as explained above, liquidity in the dimer models signals deconfinement.

A second caveat is that in the dimer model it is the two monomer free energy that has a clear meaning. As this is a state with physical charge 2 relative to the ground state, its free energy cannot be computed as a neutral vacuum correlator (unlike a quark/anti-quark potential). The strict analog of the quark/anti-quark potential is the interaction between a monomer and a site with two valence bonds (Fig. 3). Presumably the long distance interactions in the two cases will track one another.

With these comments, consider the spatial Wilson loop in the dimer limit. The product

$`\pi _W{\displaystyle \underset{i=1}{\overset{L_c}{}}}\sigma ^z`$ (16)
reduces to the strings

$`\pi _W=(\sigma _1^+\sigma _2^{}\mathrm{}\sigma _{L_c1}^+\sigma _{L_c}^{}+h.c.)`$ (17)
of dimer creation and destruction operators. In taking the expection value of $`\pi _W`$, we select pieces of the ground state wavefunction that contain precisely the dimer strings in Fig. 4 along the selected loop. To estimate this fraction we appeal to the extensive entropy of dimer configurations and to a healing length $`\xi `$ in a dimer liquid. In the liquid we therefore obtain an estimate

$`\pi _We^{c(\xi )L_c},`$ (18)
that exhibits a perimeter law consistent with the lore for a deconfined phase. Here, $`c(\xi )`$ is some numerical constant depending on the correlation length. Strictly speaking we have carried out an estimate for a ground state wavefunction spread equally over all dimer configurations – such states arise at the so-called Rokhsar-Kivelson points (see below) – but this will be qualitiatively correct everywhere in a liquid phase.

We should note that the above considerations are for static matter interacting via fluctuating gauge fields or dimers. While it is entirely reasonable that a deconfined phase at zero doping will continue into a deconfined phase at finite doping, the finite doping problem is logically distinct and needs to be treated carefully on its own. We note, for instance, the well-known result that dynamic matter does not permit an area law phase for the Wilson loop, even at arbitrarily weak coupling on account of the screening of the gauge force.

In the remainder of this section, we discuss the properties of dimer models on a number of lattices and for varying dimensionality. Besides presenting a number of new results, especially in $`d=1`$, we collate several results from the literature, several of which are in the guise of stacked magnets or transverse field Ising magnets, which therefore need translating. We will also refer to results on the GDMs or IGTs outside the QDM limit in places.

### A $`d=1`$

While $`d=1`$ is special, it is instructive in that it does provide an example of fractionalization that though distinct from the higher dimensional versions, fits nicely into the QDM description. This point was overlooked by SF in their analysis of IGTs.

Consider first the pure even IGT. In this case there are only two states in the Hilbert space, those with $`\sigma ^x=1`$ for $`\sigma ^x=1`$ on all links. The Hamiltonian can only count the number of dimers, as there is no local resonance move:

$`\widehat{H}=\mathrm{\Gamma }{\displaystyle \underset{}{}}\widehat{\sigma }^x,`$ (19)
whence the $`\sigma ^x=1`$ state is always the ground state. Consider introducing two holes at a separation $`R`$. The constraint now requires that the links between the holes carry $`\sigma ^x=1`$ which leads to an energy cost linear in $`R`$ and hence confinement. This is the well-known result on the purely confining character of the $`d=1`$ (even) IGT.

Interestingly, the odd IGT behaves very differently! There are still two states in its Hilbert space, but they consist of states with alternating values of $`\sigma ^x=1`$ and $`\sigma ^x=1`$, i.e. dimers and no dimers – evidently there are two such states related by a translation. These states are degenerate in energy. Consequently the introduction of a hole still produces a domain wall between the two phases, but two domain walls do not attract – the charge carriers are deconfined solitons. This is, of course, the familiar mechanism of solitonic fractionalization from studies of conducting polymers. What is interesting is that the odd IGT captures this mechanism in $`d=1`$ automatically.

This is a good place to give a trivial example of the difference between microscopic rewritings and effective gauge theories. Consider the one-dimensional Heisenberg chain with first $`J_1`$ and second neighbor $`J_2`$ antiferromagnetic interactions. This can be rewritten as an IGT with two Ising gauge fields – one for each bond. As is well known, for sufficiently large $`J_2`$ the chain is in the dimerized (Majumdar-Ghosh) phase where the effective theory clearly involves just one Ising gauge field.

### B $`d=2`$

Two dimensions is the case of maximum interest in the context of theories of cuprate superconductivity.

Square lattice: A general analysis of the even IGT coupled to Ising matter has been given a while back by Fradkin and Shenker. They showed that two phases exist: a deconfined phase with free charges in the spectrum and a confined/Higgs phase. The phase diagram of the odd theory is not known in as much detail. What is known is that the undoped odd IGT has a confinement transition accompanied by translational symmetry breaking as the QDM limit is approached. This result follows from analyses of the dual transverse field Ising model as well as from a map from the QDM to a height model. Consequently, the purely kinetic QDM on the square lattice gives rise to a valence bond crystal with confined spinons.

The extended QDM (Eq. LABEL:eq:exqdm) has been studied in detail in and found to be ordered for all values of $`v`$, except for a transition at the Rokhsar-Kivelson (RK) point $`v=t`$ between a staggered ($`v>t`$) and a four-fold degenerate state ($`v<t`$) which is likely a plaquette state close to the RK point and then gives way by a first order transition to a columnar state at large negative $`v`$.  At the RK point, the ground state is an equal amplitude superposition of all dimer configurations. Spinons are deconfined precisely at the transition only, and confined elsewhere. The unusual feature that a critical point intervenes between two crystals, finds an elegant explanation in terms of height representations: the effective action in the proximity of the RK point has the form conjectured most completely by Henley

$`S{\displaystyle d^2x𝑑\tau \left[(_\tau h)^2+\rho _2(h)^2+\rho _4(^2h)^2\right]}`$ (20)
with $`\rho _2(v/t)+1`$ changing sign precisely at the RK point. This action accounts for the crystal for $`v<t`$ which is a flat state of the height variable, the critical correlations and resonon spectrum $`\omega k^2`$ at the RK point, and the staggered state for $`v>t`$ which corresponds to the maximum tilt of the height variable. It also accounts for two other non-trivial features of the RK point, namely that it has degenerate ground states in all winding number sectors (the RK point action is insensitive to gradients of heights) and that its equal time height correlations are logarithmic and precisely those of the classical dimer problem – which follows from the observation,

$$𝑑\omega \frac{1}{\omega ^2+\rho _4k^4}\frac{1}{\sqrt{\rho _4}k^2}.$$

Less is known about the doped QDM, or the odd IGT coupled to charged matter. A plausible scenario, based on a different large $`N`$ limit than the one that gives rise to the QDM, has been advanced by Sachdev and Vojta who find a set of striped states followed by a d-wave superconductor. A direct treatment of the doped QDM has not been carried out except for an early mean-field theory by Fradkin and Kivelson, which led to an s-wave superconducting saddle point, but which treats electron hopping terms which lack crucial phase factors stemming from the microscopics. Further work on the doped QDM would certainly be desirable.

Triangular lattice: The standard IGT on the triangular lattice (defined by taking products of $`\sigma ^z`$ around elementary triangles) is dual to the ferromagnetic transverse field Ising model on the honeycomb lattice. Consequently, it has a phase transition identical to that of the square lattice IGT, between a confined and deconfined phase. While we do not know of a detailed analysis of the problem with Ising matter coupled to the Ising gauge field, we expect that the Fradkin-Shenker analysis applies.

The odd IGT is dual to the fully frustrated Ising model on the honeycomb lattice (see Appendix A), which has been studied by Chandra and ouselves with some evidence for weak ordering involving the breaking of translational symmetry in a confining phase. It is also possible that the confining phase is absent altogther. Indeed, in the extended QDM we have shown that there is definitely a liquid phase for a finite range of parameters, $`2/3v/t1`$, in which spinons are deconfined. This is the only known example of a deconfined phase in an IGT in the QDM limit. We note that a recent neutron scattering experiment on a triangular magnet, albeit a spatially anisotropic one, appears to have detected deconfined spinons.

Other lattices: The results for the QDM can be generalised to other lattices. The behaviour of quantum dimer models on bipartite lattices follows that of the square lattice. This is a consequence of the equivalence of the classical dimer models to a height model, which in $`d=2`$ implies critical correlations which result in an ordering transition when quantum fluctuations are switched on. In particular, this class includes the hexagonal lattice quantum dimer model.

For QDMs on non-bipartite models, no such general result is known. Typically, one expects QDMs to be disordered and gapped at the RK point $`v=t`$, and we suspect that this will result in an extended disordered phase for $`vt`$ with spin charge separation in analogy to the triangular lattice case. For some interesting results on depleted lattices see Ref. .

Charge-$`2`$ Higgs scalars: The difference between the results for bipartite lattice and the triangular lattice can be rationalized by a mechanism that has been invoked several times in previous work on the subject. In the QDM limit, we obtain a theory with a $`U(1)`$ gauge symmetry as we noted earlier, albeit one that lives in an IGT Hilbert space.

A celebrated result of Polyakov showed that the pure compact $`U(1)`$ gauge theory confines at all values of its coupling in 2+1 dimensions. This theory, defined by the Maxwell Lagrangian in the continuum, is naturally formulated on the bipartite square lattice – the plaquette product naturally translates into the former Lagrangian. It was argued by Fradkin and Kivelson that the Polyakov argument goes through for the IGT with the $`S_P`$ term. It follows then that we should expect the QDM limit of the odd IGT to be confining. Evidently, such an argument does not by itself rule out a deconfined phase in the extended QDM and one needs the more detailed height representation analysis to show that.

A second important result on $`U(1)`$ gauge theories is due to Fradkin and Shenker who studied their phase structure when coupled to matter. They showed that a coupling to charge-1 matter fields does not allow a deconfined phase to exist but that a coupling to charge-2 scalars did allow a deconfined phase to exist. This result provides a rationalization of the triangular lattice results: to make contact with the standard results on the square lattice, one must treat the triangular lattice as a square lattice with additional diagonal bonds. These additional bonds imply the presence of a charge-2 scalar field coupled to the gauge field, which then opens up the possibility of a deconfined phase.

The general attractiveness of the Fradkin-Shenker result to workers on two dimensional quantum magnetism is evident. Heisenberg models are easily reformulated as $`U(1)`$ gauge theories but in the search for spin liquids with deconfined spinons this is an embarassment. Consequently it has been suggested by many workers: Read and Sachdev, as well as Mudry and Fradkin) that the condensation of an appropriate charge-2 scalar field would allow a spin liquid to exist. In his work on the $`Sp(N)`$ analysis of the triangular lattice, which exhibits a disordered phase, Sachdev again argued that fluctuations about the saddle point solution had the structure of a $`U(1)`$ gauge field coupled to a charge-2 scalar, for essentially the same reason we invoked above.

### C $`d>2`$

In $`d>2`$, little is known about the properties of dimer models, even in the classical case. Formally, the Pfaffian methods used in $`d=2`$ to gain information about the classical models break down due to the overwhelming increase in the number of terms to be evaluated in higher dimensions.

Within the framework of dimer models, it is likely that spin-charge separation becomes prevalent because dimer models should become more disordered in high dimensions. This can be rationalised as the hardcore constraint cannot be spread out but number of possible orientations increases.

However, the usefulness of quantum dimer models for describing the physics of Mott insulators/Heisenberg models decreases in higher dimensions as it becomes increasingly hard energetically to stabilise valence-bond dominated configurations against the Neel state.

Senthil and Fisher have proposed an experiment to test their ideas on a fractionalized phase in the cuprate phase diagram and have explicitly linked this experiment to the notion of topological order invoked previously in studies of the fractional quantum Hall effect by Wen and co-workers. We examine these assertions in the context of dimer models, in reverse order. In particular we will be interested in the connection between their ideas and the topological analysis of valence bond states.

### D Topological order in the quantum Hall effect

Quantum Hall states do not break any obvious symmetry captured by a local operator; this excludes cases, such as quantum Hall ferromagnets, where a symmetry may be broken in addition. There are two alternative approaches to characterizing quantum Hall states which can both be derived from the rewriting of the electron dynamics in terms of bosons coupled to one or more fluctuating Chern-Simons gauge fields. In the first, one focuses on the bosons and characterizes their condensation via an infinite particle electron operator which works everywhere in the quantum Hall phase that grows out of the ideal quantum Hall state in a disordered system. In the second approach, one integrates out the bosons to obtain a purely gauge action, which then contains the Chern-Simons term as its leading piece.

The Chern-Simons term is topological, i.e. it is insensitive to the metric of the manifold it is defined on. The pure Chern-Simons theory, which describes the strict infrared behavior of the quantum Hall system, has a finite dimensional Hilbert space with a set of degenerate states whose number depends on the topology of the manifold.

This leads to the notion of topological order – the idea that a quantum Hall state can be characterized by its “response” to the topology of the underlying manifold. Operationally, one imagines computing the exact spectrum in finite volumes and looking for a low-lying cluster of states clearly (i.e. parametrically in system size) separated from all other states. This works perfectly for clean quantum Hall systems on the torus – e.g. there are $`q`$ exactly degenerate states at filling factor $`1/q`$. In this case it is also possible to contruct operators, corresponding to the adiabatic insertion of one quantum of flux through the holes that have the effect to transforming one ground state into another. As these operators commute with the Hamiltonian, their failure to leave the ground state invariant was interpreted by Wen and Niu as the breaking of a topological symmetry (the symmetry algebra itself being dependent on the topology of the manifold).

To summarize: Topological order in clean quantum Hall systems at the ideal filling factors involves,
a) a ground state multiplet, separated from other states by an amount parametrically larger than the splitting between them, and with a degeneracy that increases with the genus, $`g`$, of the manifold as $`q^g`$
b) a topological symmetry algebra containing operators that move the system between different members of the ground state multiplet
c) a long wavelength action (the Chern-Simons action) that defines a theory with a finite dimensional Hilbert space with the same degeneracies.

In the clean system, quantum Hall states compete with the Wigner crystal, or with various charge density wave states. The latter pair of states will lead to a higher ground state degeneracy, indeed an infinite degeneracy in the infinite volume limit corresponding to the various translations of the crystals as a whole. The same is true for the quasiparticle Wigner crystals that will form in the close proximity of quantum Hall fillings. In such cases of broken symmetry Wen and Niu have argued that the splitting between different states will be exponentially small in the area of the system (the number of moves it takes to convert one ground state into another) instead of in the linear dimension, as would be expected from tunneling processes involving quasiparticles that would move the system between different quantum Hall ground states. Hence it would take either a direct examination of the states or a study of the magnitude of the splitting to decide whether the ground state cluster is due to topological ordering or merely a broken translational symmetry (on a manifold of fixed genus, such as the torus which is what one is likely to study in practice). An alternative approach would be to explicitly lift any degeneracies due to broken symmetries by the action of small fields. Any residual degeneracy would then be topological in origin. For instance the application of a commensurate periodic potential would lead to the selection of a unique state in the Wigner crystal phase while it would reveal the underlying degeneracy of the quantum Hall state in the case of a quasiparticle Wigner crystal. (We note such a procedure would seem logically necessary for the topological degeneracy to track the off-diagonal long range order which survives in the quasiparticle Wigner crystal if its phonons are stiff enough.) Similarly in $`SU(2)`$ quantum Hall ferromagnets the introduction of a Zeeman term would be required. Our discussion here illustrates two more aspects of topological ordering in quantum Hall systems
d) an exponentially small splitting with linear dimension can be attributed to the presence of fractionalized quasiparticles that can tunnel across a loop and recombine to move the system to a new ground state
e) it is necessary to break all standard, additional, broken symmetries explicitly to reveal the underlying topological degeneracy.

Perhaps the “cleanest” as well as the most realistic way to single out the topological degeneracy is to include the effect of disorder and thereby examine a quantum Hall phase of finite extent. Wen and Niu have offered arguments that the inclusion of disorder splits the degeneracy by an amount that is $`O(e^{L/\xi })`$ in the linear dimension $`L`$ of the system, $`\xi `$ being a disorder correlation length. Their analysis, which holds exactly at $`\nu =1/q`$ neglects any creation of quasiparticles in the ground state itself, i.e. the quasiparticle spectrum is assumed to remain gapped in the presence of disorder. In general this will not be true, and certainly away from $`\nu =1/q`$ there will be localized quasiparticles in the ground state that will give rise to a gapless spectrum. In a finite volume, this spectrum will acquire a gap that is at worst polynomially small in $`L`$ and so if the exponentially small splitting of the ground states remains, they should not prevent an identification of the ground state cluster. We do not know of any detailed examination of whether the ground state splitting continues to be exponential in this limit – it would appear that one cannot merely argue by continuity from the gapped case due to the singular closing of the gap en route. Neither is it clear that the operators that move us between states in the clean case will continue to work with randomly localized (or even crystallized) quasiparticles – here again we do not know if a generalization is possible. Finally, we note that insulating states in the disordered system are expected to exhibit unique ground states that are separated from excited states by, at best, polynomially small gaps coming from localized electrons.

### E Topological Order in IGTs?

The general idea of SF is as follows (Ref. b,c). The deconfined phase posseses Ising vortex excitations (visons) that cost a finite amount of energy. As in any gauge theory where such excitations are possible, in a multiply connected geometry these can be placed so that their cores inhabit the holes and we can expect these configurations to be long lived, and in an appropriate order of limits they should be truly meta-stable (that is to say, infinitely long lived local minima). For the purposes of the experiment proposed by SF (see below) this is sufficient. To make contact with the notion of topological order, SF wish to relate the presence of visons threading holes to an infinite volume limit ground state degeneracy of $`2^h`$ on a manifold with $`h`$ holes, that can be interpreted as the breaking of a topological symmetry. In the following we explore this idea in some detail with cylinders and tori as the manifolds of interest – going beyond those in genus while retaining a lattice is tricky, especially when the gauge theory arises as an effective theory and so we will not venture that far afield. We begin with pure gauge theories.

Gauge fields alone: As noted by SF, the even IGT on the cylinder at the point $`\mathrm{\Gamma }=0`$ exemplifies their ideas. There are two exactly degenerate states, which can be written in the $`\sigma ^z`$ representation if one does not worry about the constraint. These states have two features of note: a) that they exhibit a well defined topological flux $`\widehat{F}_z=_{}\widehat{\sigma }^z`$, where the product $`_{}`$ is taken around the circumference of the cylinder. $`\widehat{F}_z`$ takes the values $`\pm 1`$ in the no-vison/vison states; and b) that there exists an operator $`\widehat{F}_x=_=\widehat{\sigma }^x`$ where the product $`_=`$ is taken along a seam of links, with the seam running along the axis of the cylinder (see SF for details). $`\widehat{F}_x`$ commutes with the Hamiltonian and converts one of the states to the other. These two operators capture the two ways of looking at the degeneracy, either as a consequence of Ising flux or that of breaking a “topological symmetry” in which a global operator ceases to annihilate the vacuum. At issue is whether these generalize beyond this special point and to Ising gauge fields coupled to matter, especially in the QDM limit.

Sticking with the even IGT for the moment, we note that the degeneracy is exact for $`\mathrm{\Gamma }K`$ in perturbation theory, for a cylinder of finite width. In contrast, it is clear in the opposite limit $`\mathrm{\Gamma }K`$ that there is a unique ground state. This implies that even for a finite width cylinder there is a true phase transition en route. We note that $`\widehat{F}_x`$ commutes with $`H`$ at all values of $`\mathrm{\Gamma }/K`$ and that $`\widehat{F}_z`$ is a natural order parameter for this transition, being odd under the action of $`\widehat{F}_x`$. Hence the distinction between the two phases is indeed captured by the action of $`\widehat{F}_x`$ and by the development of an Ising flux. We should note though that $`\widehat{F}_z`$ is measurable only for finite cylinders; being a Wilson loop, it goes to zero exponentially in (at least) the width of the cylinder at any $`\mathrm{\Gamma }0`$.

These observations should not really surprise for they involve a system that is infinite in two space-time directions and finite in one and hence are equivalent to those concerning the two dimensional IGT at finite temperature. Such a theory indeed posesses a phase transition in which the Polyakov loop (a Wilson loop taken in the time direction) develops an expection value. In the dual representation this is simply the d=2 Ising phase transition in a d=3 system that is finite in one direction.

We return now to the question of working explicitly with gauge invariant states, i.e. those that satisfy the local constraint exactly. Given a state $`|\mathrm{\Psi }`$ in the $`\sigma ^z`$ representation, we can construct a state $`𝒫|\mathrm{\Psi }`$ that is gauge invariant by the action of the projector

$$𝒫=\underset{i}{}(1/2)[\widehat{G}_{IGT}(i)+1]$$

which commutes with the Hamiltonian. Evidently, all gauge invariant observables have the same value before and after the projection. While this indicates that our earlier description is correct, it hides a subtlety of some interest in making contact with earlier work on the topology of RVB states. To uncover this, note that a state written explicitly in the $`\sigma ^x`$ basis is automatically gauge invariant if it involves only even numbers of dimers at each site. All such configurations can be classified by winding numbers – one simply asks how many loops of dimers cross a fixed line bisecting a set of horizontal bonds. For a finite height cylinder, this number is either odd and even and the action of the Hamiltonian preserves this number. Hence the true ground states must be purely even or odd. Now the vison and no-vison states, when projected, contain both sectors – they correspond to taking the linear combinations $`|\mathrm{even}\pm |\mathrm{odd}`$. Hence, although they correspond to a different choice of basis in the space of the two degenerate states, it is clear that the physical choice for the standard Hamiltonian is that of purely even and odd states which were what were invoked in earlier studies of RVB states. On the other hand, if we were to allow Wilson loops of arbitrary length in the Hamiltonian (but with exponentially suppressed coefficients to preserve effective locality) we would mix these states and obtain the vison/no-vison linear combinations split by an amount exponentially small in the cylinder circumference. In this case what description one would take to be the correct topological decomposition in the infinite volume limit would appear to be a matter of taste.

On the torus, there is no true phase transition even for the standard IGT. Instead we find an exponentially small splitting between four states when the linear dimension $`L`$ is increased at a fixed coupling corresponding to the deconfined phase and a splitting of $`O(L^0)`$ between a unique ground state and the first excited state in the confining phase. In terms of the winding number analysis, this corresponds to the four different combinations of even and odd in either direction.

We turn now to the case of the pure odd IGT. Here it is instructive to work in the $`\sigma ^x`$ representation. By means of the standard device of using a transition graph between a given state and a reference state, one can again assign a conserved even/odd winding number to each configuration. For odd height cylinders, a horizontal translation by one lattice constant interchanges the two sectors. Assuming that odd and even height cylinders converge to the same infinite height limit, it follows then that the ground state must be at least twofold degenerate at all $`\mathrm{\Gamma }/K`$ for infinite height cylinders. As the $`\mathrm{\Gamma }K`$ analysis in the $`\sigma ^z`$ representation is identical to that of the even IGT except for a different choice of projector,

$`𝒫={\displaystyle \underset{i}{}}(1/2)[\widehat{G}_{IGT}(i)1],`$ (21)
there is a twofold degeneracy in that region. Unlike in the case of the even IGT, there is a large degeneracy in the extreme opposite limit, $`K=0`$, where any dimer covering of the cylinder is a ground state. For infinite width cylinders, i.e. in the two-dimensional limit, there is a four-fold crystalline degeneracy as noted earlier. How this degeneracy is modified by finite cylinder widths is not clear to us at this point. A preliminary analysis of the QDM on cylinders indicates that it will exhibit a two-fold degenerate liquid phase that does not break any symmetries as well as a two-fold degenerate columnar phase in which the columns run along the cylinder axis. Consequently at different cylinder widths the $`K/\mathrm{\Gamma }0`$ limit may behave differently. We expect that the large circumference limit will be characterized by symmetry breaking which may either preserve the two-fold degeneracy of the lowest lying cluster (the case if the ground state remains liquid for all finite widths) or increase it by a further factor of two (the case if the ground state becomes columnar already or finite widths). In the former case one would have to examine the nature of the degenerate states to decide what phase they correspond to.

On the torus the deconfined phase has again a four-fold low lying cluster with a splitting of $`O(e^L)`$ while the confining phase will exhibit a cluster of four low lying states with a splitting of $`O(e^{L^2})`$, corresponding to the neccessity of altering the state over its entire volume instead of just along a line in the liquid case. (It is worth noting that our previous argument about translations implementing winding number sector changes implies that there is an exact two fold degeneracy due to translational symmetry breaking on odd by even tori.) So on the torus one would need to examine the size dependence of the splitting or the correlations in the ground states to distinguish the two four-fold degeneracies from each other. Alternately, as in the quantum Hall case one could turn on symmetry breaking fields that would lift the degeneracy in the crystalline phase but not in the liquid, deconfined, phase. We note that in the context of the cuprates, this is the case of maximum interest.

To summarize: The behavior of Ising gauge fields alone does display a “family resemblance” to the quantum Hall case with regards to points a,b,d and e made earlier. With respect to c the fundamentally discrete character of this problem makes it unlikely that there is an analog. That being said we should note that in the QDM limit it does not really go beyond the previous analysis of RVB wavefunctions in terms of winding number sectors – the latter is an analysis in terms of electric fluxes (the momenta conjugate to the gauge fields).

In this regard the really interesting claim of SF is that the phase obtained at finite doping is also characterized by topological order. As the even/odd classification breaks down upon doping, this would be a feature not obtained by the previous analysis. In the language of the IGT we must ask what happens when we add matter to the problem.

Gauge fields with matter: We note at the outset that this might be expected to differ from the quantum Hall case. In the latter the states differ, in a sense, by the insertion of integer numbers of flux quanta through the holes. By contrast in the IGT problem, the vison will be seen by matter fields as half a flux quantum.

Nevertheless, the effect of the additional flux can be exponentially attenuated if the matter fields are gapped on their own. The simplest such case is that of the even IGT with Ising matter. While $`\widehat{F}_x`$ no longer commutes with $`H`$, perturbative considerations indicate that in the deconfined phase there are two low lying states with a splitting that is $`O(e^L)`$ at large $`L`$, which goes away on leaving this phase. So in this case it is indeed possible to relate the deconfined phase to a two-fold degeneracy. Having identified the two “ground” states, one can test them for the presence of flux. With matter present, the even and odd sectors are now connected and the states will exhibit (small) expectation values of the Wilson loop consistent with the presence and absence of a vison.

One might wonder if it is possible to relate the two low lying states by the action of $`\widehat{F}_x`$. It turns out that the attempt to create one from the other by its action will yield a vanishing overlap in the limit of infinitely long cylinders. This result can be obtained perturbatively near the trivial point $`\mathrm{\Gamma }/K=0`$, $`u/\lambda =0`$. At this point, the ground state with $`F_z=0`$, $`|\mathrm{\Phi }_0`$ has $`\sigma ^z1`$ and $`\tau ^x1`$, whereas the state $`|\mathrm{\Phi }_1\widehat{F}_x|\mathrm{\Phi }_0`$ differs in that the horizontal $`\sigma ^z`$ are flipped along one seam along the axis of the cylinder of height $`H`$ that the lattice resides on. Carrying out perturbation theory to second order in $`u/\lambda `$ yields the perturbed wavefunctions $`|\mathrm{\Phi }_0^2`$ and $`|\mathrm{\Phi }_1^2`$, respectively. One then finds

$`\mathrm{\Phi }_1^2\left|\widehat{F}_x\right|\mathrm{\Phi }_0^2=\mathrm{exp}(2H(u/\lambda )^2).`$ (22)
where we have exponentiated the linear answer that perturbation theory actually produces. General random walk arguments indicate that the exponential dependence on the height is exact though the coefficient will be modified at higher orders in perturbation theory. In sum, the degeneracy is recovered in the infinite system size limit but the topological symmetry operation no longer takes us between ground states.

The case of greatest interest is that of charged matter coupled to Ising gauge fields. SF have suggested that spinon and holon fields coupled to an Ising gauge field are the correct low energy theory of a variety of strongly correlated systems and have argued that anomalous non-superconducting phases would be charaterized by topological degeneracies that could, in principle, be used to search for such phases in numerical studies or variational studies.

In the QDM framework, we are concerned with adding holons to a dimer liquid. If the dimers remain liquid, then we have a doped phase that might be expected to inherit topological degeneracies from the parent insulating state. It would appear that there are three possibilities:
a) the holons localize
b) the holons are bosonic and condense thereby giving rise to a superconductor
c) the holons are fermionic and produce a gapless spectrum.

In case a) one has perhaps the strongest argument for a surviving topological classification and associated degeneracy. Certainly if the holons are truly immobile, one can define even and odd sectors for that given configuration. If they are localize on some length scale, the classification is no longer strict but it seems plausible that for system sizes much bigger than their localization length, the degeneracy is recovered.

In case b) the system ends up with a superconducting vortex threading it and so the question is moot.

In case c) we would truly have a non-Fermi liquid but metallic phase. Unfortunately in such a system it would appear that all gaps are polynomially small and so it will not be possible to select a ground state multiplet in an operational sense. From the point of view of the QDM, all states involve holons and dimers in correlated motion around the torus and no topological character is evident. As we were unable to construct use the topological symmetry operator of the pure gauge theory in the case of Ising matter, we will not succeed here either. It would appear then that in this case the non-Fermi liquid character will not give rise to a meaningful topological degeneracy.

### F Flux trapping experiments

We are however, still left with the possibility that the states of the doped QDM are characterized by finite (if exponentially small) Ising flux measured by the Wilson loop. If such a state has a net vison content in a non-superconducting phase, it would seem likely that it would nucleate a vortex if the parameters are changed to condense the holons. This would then realize the SF scenario.

From our considerations in the last section, we conclude that a flux trapping experiment that cycles between phases with the holons localized and then superconducting would be the most robust while that between the latter and the strange metal is hard to predict without a more detailed theory of the metal. In either case, the issue appears quite delicate from the QDM viewpoint, in which the system is required to remember rather delicate phase relationships between different components as the parameters change. Of course one of the strengths of the vison viewpoint is, that by focussing attention on the relevant collective co-ordinate, it suggests that this is an artefact of looking too microsocpically. Further studies of the doped dimer model could be very instructive in this regard.

## VI Discussion

In this paper we have established and discussed several important connections existing between short-range RVB phases, quantum dimer models, and Ising gauge theories, which have significant implications for the problem of spin-charge separation in strongly correlated systems.

To begin with, we showed that there exists a natural physical interpretation of the Hilbert space of RVB phases, and that its Ising character follows directly from the nature of the states themselves: short-ranged RVB states are naturally described in terms of short range spin singlets which are either present or absent. Thus, from the point of view of the space of states, a description of the dimer Hilbert space should have a natural description in terms of Ising variables living on the links of the lattice. As a naive description of this form is seriously overcomplete, it is clearly necessary to impose constraints at each site which then generate a family of local gauge transformations that leave the Hamiltonian invariant. An Ising constraint would be sensitive only to the number of valence bonds modulo two. However, since the number of valence bonds (dimers) is conserved, the effective Hamiltonians associated with these states must have a natural local conservation law and consequently a local $`U(1)`$ symmetry, instead of the $`Z_2`$ “natural” symmetry of an Ising Hilbert space. We further showed that quantum dimer models can indeed be realized as (odd) Ising gauge theories with additional couplings which project out forbidden configurations of dimers (valence bonds). Thus, while the Ising variables provide a natural and economical description of the Hilbert space, the native symmetry to the physics of short-ranged RVB states is actually $`U(1)`$ and not $`Z_2`$.

However, we also found that the phase structure of generalized quantum dimer models depends on how the local $`U(1)`$ symmetry is realized. Superficially, a $`U(1)`$ gauge symmetry may seem to rule out deconfined phases since it is quite well known that the vacuum sector of $`U(1)`$ gauge theories are confining in $`2+1`$ dimensions. It turns out that for the case of the gauge theoretic description of quantum dimer models the situation is more subtle. For instance, on the square lattice the ground state turns out to be confining, and thus it is not a spin liquid. In contrast, on non-bipartite lattices the situation is quite different. Indeed in such cases dimers connecting sites on the same sublattice give rise to matter fields that carry two units of the $`U(1)`$ gauge charge. In this case the deconfinement mechanism of Ref.  (derived for the even IGT) can be expected to apply and both a confining and a deconfined phase may exist. In the deconfined phase the effective remaining “unbroken” local symmetry is reduced to $`Z_2`$. Thus, this mechanism of spin-charge separation relies entirely on the existence of a deconfined phase in the Ising gauge theory. A local $`Z_2`$ symmetry is also central to the work of SF  although their point of departure is a superconducting state with Cooper pairs. We have noted that their starting Hamiltonian has more degrees of freedom than the single band $`tJ`$ type models that we have in mind so their identification of the Ising variable is not as microscopic. However valence bonds are sufficiently akin to Cooper pairs  that one is tempted to guess that both approaches describe the same physics.

The considerations presented above assume that the confinement-deconfinement structure of the phase diagram of even Ising gauge theories holds also for the odd Ising gauge theories. Although this is not rigorously established, there is substantial evidence, including the results reported in this paper, that the main difference bewteen even and odd theories is to associate confinement with phases in which translation and/or rotational invariance are spontaneously broken, such as valence bond crystals and stripe states. In contrast, deconfined phases are always liquids. The exception to this is the case of $`d=1`$. Here the even IGT, whose ground state is translationally invariant, confines at all couplings while the odd IGT whose ground state breaks translational symmetry, and hence would be expected to be confining by our previous remarks, allows test charges to be separated at a finite cost in energy. This peculiar feature is, of course, the topological mechanism of spin-charge separation in $`d=1`$ wherein the charges are accomodated on a pair of solitons interpolating between the two ground states.

A conclusion that emerges from this line of argument, is that there is a fundamental difference behind the mechanism of spin-charge separation in one-dimensional and two-dimensional systems. Indeed, in one dimension holons and spinons are actually topological solitons, and spin-charge separation is a topological phenomenon, peculiar to the kinematics of one-dimensional systems. In contrast, in two dimensions (and higher) spin-charge separation relies on the existence of deconfinement in the sense of liquidity, which is a property of the spectrum of states in a particular phase of matter, and as such it does not hold in general; deconfinement takes place in some cases, such as the triangular lattice which can have a spin liquid ground state, whereas confinement is naturally realized on the square lattice.

The question of the existence of a deconfinement mechanism of gauge theories with dynamical matter at finite density has a long history in high energy physics which which is rather similar to the quest for a spin-charge separated state in condensed matter physics. The difficulties of defining order parameters and other tests of confinement has been a central theme in that field since the late seventies. In fact it has long been recognized in that field that no such tests can exist in terms of gauge invariant local operators (such as order parameters) or Wilson loops, if the dynamical matter fields carry the fundamental gauge charge. A related and important current question is if hadronic matter at finite density is generally and smoothly connected to conventional nuclear matter, or if a genuine quark-gluon plasma exists as a state of matter with unique measurable signatures. This latter phase is indeed precisely the equivalent of the spin-charge separated phase discussed here.

Finally, we have also discussed the question of topological degeneracy of the deconfined spin liquid states, and their possible detection which we argue is not contingent upon the former in any precise sense. We have discussed in some detail the set of desiderata associated with the notion of a topological degeneracy by reviewing the case of clean quantum Hall systems at the ideal filling fractions. We have discussed the applicability of these to disordered quantum Hall systems and then to the case of Ising gauge theories. We find that while there is certainly a sense in which IGTs in their deconfined phases exhibit a finite ground state degeneracy in the thermodynamic limit, in general there is no accessible operational test for this degeneracy short of a full solution of the spectrum of states. In particular we find that the overlap of a test state with one vison wrapped around a non-contractible loop is orthogonal to any ground state in the thermodynamic limit, and therefore it does not connect distinct degenerate states. This behavior stands in contrast with what happens in ideal quantum Hall fluids and chiral spin states, although it may be generic in more realistic cases.

## Acknowledgements

We are grateful to T. Senthil and M. P. A. Fisher for several discussions on the the connections between QDMs and IGTs and especially on their work on topological order, as well as for comments on the manuscript. Several of the results on the connections between GDMs and IGTs have also been derived independently by them. We are also grateful to D. Huse, S. Kivelson, S. Sachdev and N. Read for valuable discussions. EF thanks S. Kivelson for a prior collaboration on closely related questions, and RM and SLS would similarly like to thank P. Chandra for collaboration on related work. This work was supported in part by grants from the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, the NSF grant Nos. DMR-9978074 (Princeton) and DMR-9817941 (UIUC), the A. P. Sloan Foundation and the David and Lucille Packard Foundation.

## A Duality of IGTs with Ising models in $`d=2+1`$

We show that the GDM with the Hamiltonian given by $`\widehat{H}_{GDM}`$ (Eq. 13) in $`d=2+1`$ is dual to an Ising model with the Hamiltonian:

$`G=+1:`$ $`H_+=k{\displaystyle \underset{}{}}\widehat{S}_i^z\widehat{S}_j^z+\gamma {\displaystyle \underset{.}{}}\widehat{S}_i^x,`$ (A1)
$`G=1:`$ $`H_{}={\displaystyle \underset{}{}}k_{ij}\widehat{S}_i^z\widehat{S}_j^z+\gamma {\displaystyle \underset{.}{}}\widehat{S}_i^x,`$ (A2)
where the sums $`_{}`$ run over the links of the dual lattice and the $`_.`$ over the sites. The $`\widehat{S}`$ are Pauli spin operators defined on sites of the dual lattice, $`k>0`$ and $`|k_{ij}|=k`$. The case of $`G=1`$ is known as a fully frustrated Ising model (FFIM) since each plaquette $`\mathrm{}`$ has to have at least one frustrated bond: $`_{\mathrm{}}(k_{ij}/k)=1`$, whereas the case $`G=+1`$ is a ferromagnetic Ising model (FIM).

The starting point of the duality is the identification of a frustrated bond in the Ising model with a dimer in the GDM. One can easily convince oneself that each plaquette in the FIM (FFIM) has to have an even (odd) number of frustrated bonds, which takes care of the constraint $`G=+1(1)`$.

Conversely, each dimer state corresponds to a unique spin state (up to a global Ising reversal). This can be seen by taking a reference spin configuration, for example $`\widehat{S}^z1`$, which corresponds to a reference configurations of dimers, namely one without dimers ($`G=+1`$), or to a columnar dimer state ($`G=1`$). Any other dimer configuration can then be used to generate a ‘transition graph’ (see Ref. ), obtained by superimposing that dimer configuration with the reference dimer configuration. The resulting transition graph contains only closed loops. To fix the overall Ising redundancy, an arbitrary reference spin is chosen to point up. The orientation of any other spin is then obtained by counting the number of dimers in the transition graph any line connecting that spin to the reference spin crosses. If this number is even, the spins are aligned, otherwise they are antialigned.

To construct the equivalence between the Hamiltonians, we only need to note two facts. Firstly, the presence of a satisfied bond gains an energy $`k`$, whereas a frustrated bond costs the same amount of energy. Translating this into a statement about the absence, presence of a dimer, we obtain the identification $`\mathrm{\Gamma }=k`$ for the first pair of coupling constants. Secondly, note that flipping a spin $`S_i`$ implies exchanging all its satisfied bonds for frustrated ones and vice versa. This is equivalent to exchanging occupied and empty dimer links of the plaquette $`i`$, at the center of which $`S_i`$ is located. This immediately yields the identification of the spin flip effected by the $`\widehat{S}^x`$ operator with the plaquette term in $`\widehat{H}_{GDM}`$, together with $`\gamma =\kappa `$. This completes the demonstration of duality.

## B The Polyakov loop term in the action

In order to see the connection between the constraint in the Hamiltonian formalism and the role of the Polyakov loop in the path integral, it is useful first to recollect the appropriate construction for the electromagnetic gauge field. The Lagrangian density for the free electromagnetic field is

$`[A,j]={\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}\left(\stackrel{}{E}^2\stackrel{}{B}^2\right)A_0j_0`$ (B1)
where

$`E_i`$ $`=`$ $`_0A_i+_iA_0`$ (B2)
$`B_i`$ $`=`$ $`ϵ_{ijk}_jA_k`$ (B3)
and $`j_0`$ is a static charge distribution, say

$`j_0(z)=\delta (zx)\delta (zy)`$ (B4)
for two static charges at $`z=x,y`$ (with charge $`\pm 1`$ respectively). The path integral in $`D`$ space-time dimensions is

$`Z[j]=`$ $`{\displaystyle 𝒟A_\mu e^{i{\displaystyle d^Dx[A,j]}}}`$ (B5)
$`=`$ $`{\displaystyle 𝒟A_\mu e^{i{\displaystyle d^Dx\left[[A,0]A_0j_0\right]}}}`$ (B6)
Thus,

$`{\displaystyle \frac{Z[j]}{Z[0]}}=e^{i{\displaystyle 𝑑x_0A_0(\stackrel{}{x},x_0)}}e^{+i{\displaystyle 𝑑x_0A_0(\stackrel{}{y},x_0)}}`$ (B7)
namely, the expectation value of the product of two Polyakov loops.

It is easy to show that in the Hamiltonian picture the Polyakov loops become static sources in the Gauss’ Law constraint. Let us rewrite the path integral by using the coherent state representation, which is a integral over both the vector potential $`A_i`$, the conjugate momenta, the electric field $`E_i`$, and the Lagrange multiplier field $`A_0`$. Glossing over issues related to gauge fixing, gauge copies, and Faddeev-Popov determinants, one writes,

$`Z[j]={\displaystyle 𝒟E_i𝒟A_i𝒟A_0e^{i{\displaystyle d^Dx[A_i,E_i,A_0,j]}}}`$ (B8)
where

$`[A_i,E_i,A_0,j]=E_i`$ $`_0A_i{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}\left(\stackrel{}{E}^2+\stackrel{}{B}^2\right)`$ (B10)
$`+A_0\left(_iE_ij_0\right)`$
Thus, we see that the role of $`A_0`$ is of a Lagrange multiplier that forces Gauss’ Law

$`\left[\stackrel{}{}\stackrel{}{E}j_0\right]|\mathrm{Phys}=0`$ (B11)
as a constraint on the physical Hilbert space. Thus, the Polyakov loops are equiv alent to static sources. Notice that this is really the Hamiltonian picture since we get that the momentum canonically conjugate to $`\stackrel{}{A}`$ is $`\stackrel{}{E}`$, as we should.

We now turn to the case of the Ising gauge theory. Consider the Hamiltonian of Eq. 13. For convenience, we define $`\widehat{\mu }^x=(1\widehat{\sigma }^x)/2`$, so that the Hamiltonian is written, up to a constant,

$$\widehat{H}_{GDM}=2\mathrm{\Gamma }\underset{}{}\widehat{\mu }^x\kappa \underset{\mathrm{}}{}\widehat{\sigma }^z\widehat{\sigma }^z\widehat{\sigma }^z\widehat{\sigma }^z.$$
(B12)
It turns out to be convenient to rewrite the constraint operator $`\widehat{G}=\widehat{\tau }^x_+\sigma ^x`$ as follows. Let $`\widehat{L}(i)=\widehat{\nu }(i)^x+_+\widehat{\mu }^x`$, where $`\widehat{\nu }^x(i)=(1\widehat{\tau }^x(i))/2`$. Then the projector enforcing $`\widehat{G}(i)|\mathrm{phys}=\mathrm{{\rm Y}}(i)|\mathrm{phys}`$ at site $`i`$ is given by

$`\widehat{P}(i)=(1/2)\left[1+(1)^{(\widehat{L}(i)+\xi (i))}\right].`$ (B13)
Here, $`\xi (i)=(1+\mathrm{{\rm Y}}(i))/2`$ is $`0`$ for an even site and $`1`$ for an odd site. In the absence of matter, all sites of the even (odd) theory are even (odd), but the addition of a hole at a site changes it from even to odd and vice versa, so that the following treatment is appropriate for static matter.

We now Trotterise the partition function $`Z(\beta )`$ at temperature $`1/\beta `$ and obtain

$`Z(\beta )`$ $`=`$ $`\mathrm{Tr}\left(\mathrm{exp}(\beta \widehat{H})\widehat{P}\right)`$ (B14)
$`=`$ $`\underset{ϵ0}{lim}{\displaystyle \underset{\zeta =0}{\overset{N1}{}}}\left\{\sigma _{\zeta +1}^z\right\}\left|\mathrm{exp}(ϵ\widehat{H})\widehat{P}\right|\left\{\sigma _\zeta ^z\right\},`$ (B15)
where the Greek letter $`\zeta `$ labels the (imaginary) time slices, and $`ϵ=\beta /N`$, and the $`\sigma ^z`$ are eigenstates of $`\widehat{\sigma }^z`$.

Consider a single term in the product, which we evaluate by inserting a complete set of eigenstates of $`\widehat{\sigma }^x`$:

$`\left\{\sigma _{\zeta +1}^z\right\}|`$ $`\mathrm{exp}(ϵ\widehat{H})\widehat{P}|\left\{\sigma _\zeta ^z\right\}=\mathrm{Tr}_{\left\{\sigma _\zeta ^x\right\}}{\displaystyle \underset{\{\lambda _\zeta (i)=0,1\}}{}}(1/2)^{N_s}`$ (B19)
$`\mathrm{exp}(ϵ\kappa {\displaystyle \underset{\mathrm{}}{}}\sigma ^z\sigma ^z\sigma ^z\sigma ^z)\mathrm{exp}(2ϵ\mathrm{\Gamma }{\displaystyle \underset{}{}}\mu ^x)\times `$
$`{\displaystyle \underset{i}{}}\mathrm{exp}\left[i\pi \lambda _\zeta (i)({\displaystyle \underset{+}{}}\mu ^x+\xi (i))\right]\times `$
$`\left\{\sigma _{\zeta +1}^z\right\}|\left\{\sigma _\zeta ^x\right\}\left\{\sigma _\zeta ^x\right\}|\left\{\sigma _\zeta ^z\right\}`$
Here, $`N_s`$ is the number of sites, and $`N_b`$ the number of bonds. We have rewritten the projector as an exponential and turned the operators into numbers by letting them act on their appropriate eigenstates. Note that $`\{\sigma _\zeta ^x\}|\{\sigma _\zeta ^z\}=2^{N_b/2}\mathrm{exp}\left(i\pi _{}\mu _\zeta ^x\nu _\zeta ^z\right)`$, where the sum runs over all links in timeslice $`\zeta `$.

Collecting together the terms involving the $`\sigma ^x`$, we obtain

$`{\displaystyle \underset{\left\{\sigma _\zeta ^x\right\}}{}}{\displaystyle \underset{i_𝒟}{}}{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}`$ $`\mathrm{exp}\{\mu _\zeta ^x(i_𝒟)[2ϵ\mathrm{\Gamma }+i\pi (\lambda _\zeta (i)+\lambda _\zeta (i+𝒟)+`$ (B21)
$`\mu _\zeta ^z(i_𝒟)+\mu _{\zeta +1}^z(i_𝒟))]\}.`$
Here, $`i_𝒟`$ labels the bond connecting site $`i`$ with its neighbour in a spatial direction labelled by $`𝒟`$.

The term in parentheses in the foregoing equation can be turned into a plaquette product by defining $`\sigma ^z=(1+\lambda )/2`$ on the temporal links, so that this expression becomes

$`{\displaystyle \underset{i_𝒟}{}}{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}\left\{1+\mathrm{exp}(2ϵ\mathrm{\Gamma }){\displaystyle \underset{\mathrm{}}{}}\sigma ^z\right\}={\displaystyle \underset{i_𝒟}{}}{\displaystyle \frac{\mathrm{exp}(K^\tau _{\mathrm{}}\sigma ^z)}{2\mathrm{cosh}K^\tau }}.`$ (B22)
In the last step, we have used the fact the product over plaquettes containing temporal bonds occurring in this expression, $`_{\mathrm{}}\sigma ^z`$, can only take on values $`\pm 1`$. The equality holds for a temporal coupling $`K^\tau =\mathrm{tanh}(2ϵ\mathrm{\Gamma })`$.

Putting this result back into Eq. B15, using $`2\mathrm{cosh}K^\tau \mathrm{exp}(K^\tau )`$ for $`ϵ0`$, and substituting for $`\lambda `$ in terms of temporal $`\sigma ^z`$, we obtain

$`Z(\beta )`$ $`=`$ $`(1/2)^{N_s}\mathrm{Tr}_{\left\{\sigma \right\}}\left[{\displaystyle \underset{|}{}}\sigma (i)^{\xi (i)}\right]\times `$ (B24)
$`\mathrm{exp}\left[K^s{\displaystyle \underset{\mathrm{}}{}}\sigma \sigma \sigma \sigma K^\tau {\displaystyle \underset{\mathrm{}}{}}\sigma \sigma \sigma \sigma \right],`$
where $`K^s=ϵ\kappa `$, the first sum in the second line runs over spatial plaquettes, the second over temporal plaquettes. The trace now runs over all the $`\sigma `$, both in spatial and temporal directions.

Crucially the product $`_|`$ runs over the temporal links – this is the Polyakov loop term. It contributes a nontrivial phase for all the odd sites. This is what we set out to show.