Global shift symmetry on an ADM hypersurface: Toward emergent gravity

Generalized symmetries and their spontaneous breakdown serve as the fundamental concept to constrain the many-body entanglement structure, which allows us to characterize quantum phases of matter and emergent collective excitations. For example, emergent photons may be understood by spontaneous 1-form symmetry breaking, which results from a long-ranged entanglement structure between UV microscopic degrees of freedom. In this study, we show that emergent “gravity” may also arise in a similar fashion, where quotes have been used to emphasize that the symmetry-constrained gravitons show unconventional properties compared to usual gravitons. As the electric 1-form symmetry in Maxwell theory is realized as a global shift symmetry of the spatial component of the <a:math xmlns:a="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" display="inline"><a:mrow><a:mi mathvariant="normal">U</a:mi><a:mo stretchy="false">(</a:mo><a:mn>1</a:mn><a:mo stretchy="false">)</a:mo></a:mrow></a:math> gauge field, generated by the electric field, we demonstrate that a constant shift of the Arnowitt-Deser-Misner (ADM) metric on the spatial hypersurface can be viewed as a global symmetry, generated by the ADM canonical momentum. Deriving a vector-type conserved charge from the variation of action, we construct a shift symmetry operator. Considering a Wick rotation, we demonstrate that a gravitational Wilson loop is charged under the action of this shift symmetry operator, which thus confirms the existence of a generalized global symmetry on the ADM hypersurface. Based on the Ward identity, we show that the spontaneous breaking of this global shift symmetry may give rise to a nonpropagating massless symmetric gauge field at the boundary of the hypersurface. Published by the American Physical Society 2024