In this talk, we give the lattice regularized formulation of the mixed 't Hooft anomaly between the ZN 1-form symmetry and the θ periodicity for 4d pure Yang-Mills theory, which was originally discussed by Gaiotto et al. in the continuum description.
For this purpose, we define the topological charge of the lattice SU(N) gauge theory coupled with the background ZN 2-form gauge fields Bp by generalizing Luscher's construction of the SU(N) topological charge.
We show that this lattice topological charge enjoys the fractional 1/N shift completely characterized by the background gauge field Bp, and this rigorously proves the mixed 't Hooft anomaly with the finite lattice spacings.
As a consequence, the Yang-Mills vacua at θ and θ+2π are distinct as the symmetry-protected topological states when the confinement is assumed.
