In this work, we develop a coupled layer construction of fracton topological orders in d = 3 spatial dimensions. These topological phases have subextensive topological ground-state degeneracy and possess excitations whose movement is restricted in interesting ways. Our coupled layer approach is used to construct several different fracton topological phases, both from stacked layers of simple d = 2 topological phases and from stacks of d = 3 fracton topological phases. This perspective allows us to shed light on the physics of the X-cube model recently introduced by Vijay, Haah, and Fu, which we demonstrate can be obtained as the strong-coupling limit of a coupled three-dimensional stack of toric codes. We also construct two new models of fracton topological order: a semionic generalization of the X-cube model, and a model obtained by coupling together four interpenetrating X-cube models, which we dub the 'four color cube model". The couplings considered lead to fracton topological orders via mechanisms we dub "p-string condensation" and "p-membrane condensation", in which strings or membranes built from particle excitations are driven to condense. This allows the fusion properties, braiding statistics, and ground-state degeneracy of the phases we construct to be easily studied in terms of more familiar degrees of freedom. Our work raises the possibility of studying fracton topological phases from within the framework of topological quantum field theory, which may be useful for obtaining a more complete understanding of such phases.

Fractons are gapped pointlike excitations in d = 3 topological ordered phases whose motion is constrained. They have been discovered in several gapped models but a unifying physical mechanism for generating them is still missing. It has been noticed that in symmetric-tensor U(1) gauge theories, charges are fractons and cannot move freely due to, for example, the conservation of not only the charge but also the dipole moment. To connect these theories with fully gapped fracton models, we study Higgs and partial confinement mechanisms in rank-2 symmetric-tensor gauge theories, where charges or magnetic excitations, respectively, are condensed. Specifically, we describe two different routes from the rank-2 U(1) scalar charge theory to the X-cube fracton topological order, finding that a combination of Higgs and partial confinement mechanisms is necessary to obtain the fully gapped fracton model. On the other hand, the rank-2 Z 2 scalar charge theory, which is obtained from the former theory upon condensing charge-2 matter, is equivalent to four copies of the d = 3 toric code and does not support fracton excitations. We also explain how the checkerboard fracton model can be viewed as a rank-2 Z 2 gauge theory with two different Gauss' law constraints on different lattice sites.

Entanglement entropy provides a powerful characterization of two-dimensional gapped topological phases of quantum matter, intimately tied to their description by topological quantum field theories (TQFTs). Fracton topological orders are three-dimensional gapped topologically ordered states of matter that lack a TQFT description. We show that three-dimensional fracton phases are nevertheless characterized, at least partially, by universal structure in the entanglement entropy of their ground state wave functions. We explicitly compute the entanglement entropy for two archetypal fracton models -the 'X-cube model' and 'Haah's code' -and demonstrate the existence of a non-local contribution that scales linearly in subsystem size. We show via Schrieffer-Wolff transformations that this piece of the entanglement entropy of fracton models is robust against arbitrary local perturbations of the Hamiltonian. Finally, we argue that these results may be extended to characterize localization-protected fracton topological order in excited states of disordered fracton models.arXiv:1710.01744v3 [cond-mat.str-el]