Glassy quantum dynamics in translation invariant fracton models

We investigate relaxation in the recently discovered "fracton" models and discover that these models naturally host glassy quantum dynamics in the absence of quenched disorder. We begin with a discussion of "type I" fracton models, in the taxonomy of Vijay, Haah, and Fu. We demonstrate that in these systems, the mobility of charges is suppressed exponentially in the inverse temperature. We further demonstrate that when a zero-temperature type I fracton model is placed in contact with a finite-temperature heat bath, the approach to equilibrium is a logarithmic function of time over an exponentially wide window of time scales. Generalizing to the more complex "type II" fracton models, we find that the charges exhibit subdiffusion up to a relaxation time that diverges at low temperatures as a superexponential function of inverse temperature. This behavior is reminiscent of "nearly localized" disordered systems, but occurs with a translation invariant three-dimensional Hamiltonian. We also conjecture that fracton models with conserved charge may support a phase which is a thermal metal but a charge insulator.