Local symmetries and extensive ground-state degeneracy of a one-dimensional supersymmetric fermionic chain

We study a one-dimensional supersymmetric hard-core fermion model first proposed by Fendley, Schoutens, and de Boer [Phys. Rev. Lett. 90, 120402 (2003)]. We focus on the full Hilbert space instead of a restricted subspace. Exact diagonalization shows the degeneracy of zero-energy states scales exponentially with size of the system, with a recurrence relation between different system sizes. We solve the degeneracy problem by showing the ground states can be systematically constructed by inserting immobile walls of fermions into the chain. Mapping the counting problem to a combinatorial one and obtaining the exact generating function, we prove the recurrence relation on both open and periodic chains. We also provide an explicit mapping between ground states, giving a combinatorial explanation of the recurrence relation.