Resonating valence bond (RVB) states describe one of the most extreme classes of quantum phases that feature emergent gauge fields at low energy. Since Anderson revived this concept in 1973 in the spin physics context, the pursuit of such phases has been mostly restricted to the studies of frustrated antiferromagnets. In this series of works, we found an entirely different route to their possible realizations, which builds on phonon degrees of freedom on lattice bonds—roughly realizing Pauling's original intuitive depiction of RVB in 1949. 

We provide three explicit minimal models as caricatures of certain electron-phonon systems, in which we show with asymptotically exact results that deconfined gauge fields emerge in certain strong coupling regimes of their phase diagrams.

The critical temperatures (Tc) of superconductivity mediated by strong electron-phonon interactions are typically low due to the polaronic effect. However, we found the conventional estimates of Tc can be surpassed by certain unconventional electron-phonon coupling, such as quadratic [1] or Su-Schrieffer-Heeger [2] ones.