• Accepted Paper

Hilbert space fragmentation from generalized symmetries

Thea Budde, Marina Kristć Marinković, and Joao C. Pinto Barros

Phys. Rev. Lett. - Accepted 6 October, 2026

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/9h5h-cglm

Abstract

Hilbert space fragmentation refers to exponential growth in the number of dynamically disconnected Krylov sectors with system size. It is taken as evidence of ergodicity breaking, since conventional symmetries generate at most a polynomial number of sectors. However, we demonstrate that generalized symmetries, including higher-form, subsystem, and gauge symmetries, can have exponentially many symmetry sectors in the tensor product basis. We further prove that non-invertible symmetries can induce additional fragmentation within individual symmetry sectors. Fragmentation in several known models arises from generalized symmetries, and the presence of exponentially many Krylov sectors therefore does not by itself imply ergodicity breaking. Finally, we show that disorder free localization arises from Krylov-restricted thermalization when sectors lack translation invariance, requiring neither ergodicity breaking nor gauge symmetry.

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