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arXiv:1503.04035

Gapped and gapless phases of frustration-free spin-1/2 chains

Sergey B. Bravyi, David Gosset

Published Mar 13, 2015• 0 citations
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Abstract

We consider a family of translation-invariant quantum spin chains with nearest-neighbor interactions and derive necessary and sufficient conditions for these systems to be gapped in the thermodynamic limit. More precisely, let $ψ$ be an arbitrary two-qubit state. We consider a chain of $n$ qubits with open boundary conditions and Hamiltonian $H_n(ψ)$ which is defined as the sum of rank-1 projectors onto $ψ$ applied to consecutive pairs of qubits. We show that the spectral gap of $H_n(ψ)$ is upper bounded by $1/(n-1)$ if the eigenvalues of a certain two-by-two matrix simply related to $ψ$ have equal non-zero absolute value. Otherwise, the spectral gap is lower bounded by a positive constant independent of $n$ (depending only on $ψ$). A key ingredient in the proof is a new operator inequality for the ground space projector which expresses a monotonicity under the partial trace. This monotonicity property appears to be very general and might be interesting in its own right. As an extension of our main result, we obtain a complete classification of gapped and gapless phases of frustration-free translation-invariant spin-1/2 chains with nearest-neighbor interactions.

DOI
10.48550/arxiv.1503.04035

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We consider a family of translation-invariant quantum spin chains with nearest-neighbor interactions and derive necessary and sufficient conditions for these systems to be gapped in the thermodynamic limit. More precisely, let ψψψ be an arbitrary two-qubit state. We consider a chain of nnn qubits with open boundary conditions and Hamiltonian Hn(ψ)H_n(ψ)Hn​(ψ) which is defined as the sum of rank-1 projectors onto ψψψ applied to consecutive pairs of qubits. We show that the spectral gap of Hn(ψ)H_n(ψ)Hn​(ψ) is upper bounded by 1/(n−1)1/(n-1)1/(n−1) if the eigenvalues of a certain two-by-two matrix simply related to ψψψ have equal non-zero absolute value. Otherwise, the spectral gap is lower bounded by a positive constant independent of nnn (depending only on ψψψ). A key ingredient in the proof is a new operator inequality for the ground space projector which expresses a monotonicity under the partial trace. This monotonicity property appears to be very general and might be interesting in its own right. As an extension of our main result, we obtain a complete classification of gapped and gapless phases of frustration-free translation-invariant spin-1/2 chains with nearest-neighbor interactions.
We consider a family of translation-invariant quantum spin chains with nearest-neighbor interactions and derive necessary and sufficient conditions for these systems to be gapped in the thermodynamic limit. More precisely, let ψ be an arbitrary two-qubit state. We consider a chain of n qubits with open boundary conditions and Hamiltonian Hn(ψ) which is defined as the sum of rank-1 projectors onto ψ applied to consecutive pairs of qubits. We show that the spectral gap of Hn(ψ) is upper bounded by 1/(n − 1) if the eigenvalues of a certain 2 × 2 matrix simply related to ψ have equal non-zero absolute value. Otherwise, the spectral gap is lower bounded by a positive constant independent of n (depending only on ψ). A key ingredient in the proof is a new operator inequality for the ground space projector which expresses a monotonicity under the partial trace. This monotonicity property appears to be very general and might be interesting in its own right. As an extension of our main result, we obtain a complete classification of gapped and gapless phases of frustration-free translation-invariant spin-1/2 chains with nearest-neighbor interactions.
We improve Knabe’s spectral gap bound for frustration-free translation-invariant local Hamiltonians in 1D. The bound is based on a relationship between global and local gaps. The global gap is the spectral gap of a size-m chain with periodic boundary conditions, while the local gap is that of a subchain of size n < m with open boundary conditions. Knabe proved that if the local gap is larger than the threshold value 1/(n − 1) for some n > 2, then the global gap is lower bounded by a positive constant in the thermodynamic limit m → ∞. Here we improve the threshold to 6n(n+1), which is better (smaller) for all n > 3 and which is asymptotically optimal. As a corollary we establish a surprising fact about 1D translation-invariant frustration-free systems that are gapless in the thermodynamic limit: for any such system the spectral gap of a size-n chain with open boundary conditions is upper bounded as O(n−2). This contrasts with gapless frustrated systems where the gap can be Θ(n−1). It also limits the extent to which the area law is violated in these frustration-free systems, since it implies that the half-chain entanglement entropy is O(1/ϵ) as a function of spectral gap ϵ. We extend our results to frustration-free systems on a 2D square lattice.
Here is the finding. For frustration-free spin-1/2 chains, the spectral gap question is decidable. We can completely classify these systems into gapped and gapless phases. This holds even though the general problem for translationally invariant Hamiltonians is undecidable, as shown by Cubitt, Perez-Garcia, and Wolf in 2015. Here is the context. We are talking about Hamiltonians written as a sum of local terms, each positive semidefinite, with a ground state annihilated by every term. That is the frustration-free condition. The spectral gap is the energy difference between the first excited state and the ground state. For a general quantum many-body system, determining whether that gap closes in the thermodynamic limit is notoriously hard. But for this restricted class, the mathematics gives us a clean answer. Here is the mechanism. The key is the matrix product state representation. The ground state of a gapped phase has finite correlation length. Its MPS transfer matrix is injective Author: Andrew Stewart Caldin, Independent Researcher, UK. Part of the E8 Intelligence Research series. Platform: e8intelligence.com
FINDING: Frustration-free spin-1/2 chains admit a complete classification into gapped and gapless phases, with the spectral gap question being decidable for this restricted class despite general undecidability results for translationally invariant Hamiltonians. | MATH: Hamiltonian H = Σᵢ hᵢ with hᵢ ≥ 0 (frustration-free condition: ground state |ψ⟩ satisfies hᵢ|ψ⟩ = 0 ∀i). Spectral gap Δ = E₁ − E₀. For spin-1/2 chains, the relevant algebra is SU(2) with root system A₁ (rank 1, single simple root α, Cartan matrix [2]). The MPS (matrix product state) representation classifies phases via injectivity of the transfer matrix. Key result: gapped iff the MPS is injective (finite correlation length ξ < ∞); gapless iff the MPS is non-injective (algebraic decay, ξ → ∞). | CONNECTION: Root lattice A₁ = 1D chain of spins; the Dynkin diagram of A₁ is a single node (trivial). The classification of gapped/gapless phases maps to whether the ground state lives in a trivial or non-trivial superselection s Author: Andrew Stewart Caldin, Independent Researcher, UK. Part of the E8 Intelligence Research series. Platform: e8intelligence.com
We consider random translation-invariant frustration-free quantum spin Hamiltonians on ZD in which the nearest-neighbor interaction in every direction is randomly sampled and then distributed across the lattice. Our main result is that, under a small rank constraint, the Hamiltonians are automatically frustration-free and they are gapped with a positive probability. This extends previous results on 1D spin chains to all dimensions. The argument additionally controls the local gap. As an application, we obtain a 2D area law for a cut-dependent ground state via recent AGSP methods of Anshu-Arad-Gosset.
The existence of a spectral gap above the ground state has far-reaching consequences for the low-energy physics of a quantum many-body system. A recent work of Movassagh [R. Movassagh, Phys. Rev. Lett. 119, 220504 (2017)] shows that a spatially random local quantum Hamiltonian is generically gapless. Here we observe that a gap is more common for translation-invariant quantum spin chains, more specifically, that these are gapped with a positive probability if the interaction is of small rank. This is in line with a previous analysis of the spin-1/21/21/2 case by Bravyi and Gosset [S. Bravyi and D. Gosset, J. Math. Phys. 56, 061902 (2015)]. The Hamiltonians are constructed by selecting a single projection of sufficiently small rank at random and then translating it across the entire chain. By the rank assumption, the resulting Hamiltonians are automatically frustration-free and this fact plays a key role in our analysis.