  Fractonic phases are new phases of matter that host excitations with
restricted mobility. We show that a certain class of gapless fractonic phases
are realized as a result of spontaneous breaking of continuous higher-form
symmetries whose conserved charges do not commute with spatial translations. We
refer to such symmetries as nonuniform higher-form symmetries. These symmetries
fall within the standard definition of higher-form symmetries in quantum field
theory, and the corresponding symmetry generators are topological. Worldlines
of particles are regarded as the charged objects of 1-form symmetries, and
mobility restrictions can be implemented by introducing additional 1-form
symmetries whose generators do not commute with spatial translations. These
features are realized by effective field theories associated with spontaneously
broken nonuniform 1-form symmetries. At low energies, the theories reduce to
known higher-rank gauge theories such as scalar/vector charge gauge theories,
and the gapless excitations in these theories are interpreted as
Nambu--Goldstone modes for higher-form symmetries. Due to the nonuniformity of
the symmetry, some of the modes acquire a gap, which is the higher-form
analogue of the inverse Higgs mechanism of spacetime symmetries. The gauge
theories have emergent nonuniform magnetic symmetries, and some of the magnetic
monopoles become fractonic. We identify the 't~Hooft anomalies of the
nonuniform higher-form symmetries and the corresponding bulk symmetry-protected
topological phases. By this method, the mobility restrictions are fully
determined by the choice of the commutation relations of charges with
translations. This approach allows us to view existing (gapless) fracton models
such as the scalar/vector charge gauge theories and their variants from a
unified perspective and enables us to engineer theories with desired mobility
restrictions.
