Dynamical Spectral Response of Fractonic Quantum Matter

Abstract: Quantum many-body systems with fractonic excitations can realize fascinating phases of matter. Here, we study the low-energy excitations of a constrained Bose-Hubbard model in one dimension, which conserves the center of mass or, equivalently, the dipole moment in addition to the particle number. This model is known to realize fractonic phases, including a dipole Mott insulator, a dipole Luttinger liquid, and a metastable dipole supersolid. We use tensor network methods to compute spectral functions from the dynamical response of the system and verify predictions from low-energy field theories of the corresponding ground state phases. We demonstrate the existence of gapped excitations compatible with strong coupling results in a dipole Mott insulator, linear sound modes characteristic of a Luttinger liquid of dipoles, and soft quadratic modes at both zero and finite momenta in a supersolid state with charge density wave order and phase coherence at non-integer filling.