Abstract

In the context of quantum spin liquids, it is long known that the condensation of fractionalized excitations will inevitably break certain physical symmetries sometimes. For example, condensing spinons will usually break spin rotation and time reversal symmetries. We generalize these phenomena to generic continuous quantum phase transitions between symmetry enriched topological orders driven by anyon condensation. We provide a generic rule to determine whether a symmetry is enforced to break across an anyon condensation transition. Using a dimensional reduction scheme, we establish a mapping between these symmetry-breaking anyon-condensation transitions in two spatial dimensions, and deconfined quantum criticality in one spatial dimension.