Unveiling UV/IR Mixing via Symmetry Defects: A View from Topological Entanglement Entropy

Some topological lattice models in two spatial dimensions have been found to exhibit intricate system size dependence in their ground state degeneracy (GSD), often known as UV/IR mixing. We distinguish between two explanations for this phenomenon by explicitly calculating the topological entanglement entropy (TEE) of a model system, the rank-2 toric code, for a bi-partition of the torus into two cylinders. Focusing on the fact that the rank-2 toric code is a translation symmetry-enriched topological phase, we show that viewing distinct system sizes as different translation symmetry defects can explain both our TEE results and the GSD of the rank-2 toric code. Our work establishes the symmetry defect framework as the most complete description of this system size dependence.