We study the relation between the spectral gap above the ground state and the decay of the correlations in the ground state in quantum spin and fermion systems with short-range interactions on a wide class of lattices. We prove that, if two observables anticommute with each other at large distance, then the nonvanishing spectral gap implies exponential decay of the corresponding correlation. When two observables commute with each other at large distance, the connected correlation function decays exponentially under the gap assumption. If the observables behave as a vector under the U(1) rotation of a global symmetry of the system, we use previous results on the large distance decay of the correlation function to show the stronger statement that the correlation function itself, rather than just the connected correlation function, decays exponentially under the gap assumption on a lattice with a certain self-similarity in (fractal) dimensions D < 2. In particular, if the system is translationally invariant in one of the spatial directions, then this self-similarity condition is automatically satisfied. We also treat systems with long-range, power-law decaying interactions. Spectral Gap and Exponential Decay of Correlations 2 1
We study the relation between the spectral gap above the ground state and the decay of the correlations in the ground state in quantum spin and fermion systems with short-range interactions on a wide class of lattices. We prove that, if two observables anticommute with each other at large distance, then the nonvanishing spectral gap implies exponential decay of the corresponding correlation. When two observables commute with each other at large distance, the connected correlation function decays exponentially under the gap assumption. If the observables behave as a vector under the U(1) rotation of a global symmetry of the system, we use previous results on the large distance decay of the correlation function to show the stronger statement that the correlation function itself, rather than just the connected correlation function, decays exponentially under the gap assumption on a lattice with a certain self-similarity in (fractal) dimensions D < 2. In particular, if the system is translationally invariant in one of the spatial directions, then this self-similarity condition is automatically satisfied. We also treat systems with long-range, power-law decaying interactions. Spectral Gap and Exponential Decay of Correlations 2 1
It has been proved that in gapped ground states of locally interacting lattice quantum systems with a finite local Hilbert space, the effect of local perturbations decays exponentially with distance.However, in systems with power-law-(1/r α ) decaying interactions, no analogous statement has been shown and there are serious mathematical obstacles to proving it with existing methods.In this paper, we prove that when α exceeds the spatial dimension D, the effect of local perturbations on local properties a distance r away is upper bounded by a power law 1/r α 1 in gapped ground states, provided that the perturbations do not close the spectral gap.The power-law exponent α 1 is tight if α > 2D and interactions are two-body, where we have α 1 = α.The proof is enabled by a method that avoids the use of quasiadiabatic continuation and incorporates techniques of complex analysis.This method also improves bounds on ground-state correlation decay, even in short-range interacting systems.Our work generalizes the fundamental notion that local perturbations have local effects to power-law interacting systems, with broad implications for numerical simulations and experiments.
This thesis analyses several locality properties of extended quantum lattice systems, considering both spins and fermions. We begin by assuming locality of the Hamiltonian and then discuss how this translates into locality of the time evolution and the thermal states. Starting from a local Hamiltonian, it is well known that the Heisenberg time evolution satisfies Lieb-Robinson bounds, which quantify its locality. We strengthen these bounds for long-range interacting fermions and for commuting interactions. Furthermore, we establish the first Lieb-Robinson bounds for Hamiltonians whose local terms can grow linearly away from the origin. We also prove stability of Lieb-Robinson bounds with respect to local perturbations in the Hamiltonian. For the thermal states we focus on three types of locality known as decay of correlations, the local perturbations perturb locally (LPPL) principle and local indistinguishability. As a key tool we use spectral filters, which were introduced by Hastings in the 2000s for various applications. It enable us to use Lieb-Robinson bounds to obtain information about locality properties of states. In particular, we use quantum belief propagation to prove an equivalence of decay of correlations, LPPL and local indistinguishability for Gibbs states at any positive temperature. Using the improved Lieb-Robinson bounds mentioned before, we obtain improvements for decay of correlations in the ground state, the locality of the spectral flow and LPPL for long-range interacting systems and commuting Hamiltonians. Furthermore, we adjust the filter functions to achieve exponential decay for certain applications that were previously limited to stretched exponential decay. Spectral filters are also used to rigorously justify response theory, which usually requires a gapped system to begin with. To relax this assumption, we introduce various notions of local gaps, discuss their relations and use one to justify response theory and Kubo’s formula in the absence of a global gap. In another result we use local indistinguishability as an input to prove bulk-edge correspondence at finite temperature, in the sense that the bulk magnetisation is equal to the edge current. This result has mostly been studied for non-interacting models or at zero temperature before. Finally, we present a class of weakly interacting spin systems with an on-site gap and prove that the ground state satisfies a strong form of LPPL. Moreover, we show that these systems satisfy decay of correlations and local indistinguishability uniformly in temperature.
We provide an analysis of the correlation properties of spin and fermionic systems on a lattice evolving according to open system dynamics generated by a local primitive Liouvillian. We show that if the Liouvillian has a spectral gap which is independent of the system size, then the correlations between local observables decay exponentially as a function of the distance between their supports. We prove, furthermore, that if the Log-Sobolev constant is independent of the system size, then the system satisfies clustering of correlations in the mutual information—a much more stringent form of correlation decay. As a consequence, in the latter case we get an area law (with logarithmic corrections) for the mutual information. As a further corollary, we obtain a stability theorem for local distant perturbations. We also demonstrate that gapped free-fermionic systems exhibit clustering of correlations in the covariance and in the mutual information. We conclude with a discussion of the implications of these results for the classical simulation of open quantum systems with matrix-product operators and the robust dissipative preparation of topologically ordered states of lattice spin systems.
We prove that weak long-range many-body interactions preserve the bulk gap of a free fermion system and that a quasi-local spectral flow transports the free ground state to ground states of the interacting system. Let Φh be a free fermionic interaction, possibly including pairing terms, whose infinite-volume Majorana coefficient operator h has no spectrum in (−g,g), and let V be an even self-adjoint many-body interaction. For sufficiently small ∣λ∣, we construct pure ground states ωλ of the interacting bulk system Φλ=Φh+λV and quasi-local automorphisms β0,λ such that ωλ=ω0∘β0,λ, where ω0 is the free ground state of Φh. Each ωλ has a GNS Hamiltonian with gap at least g−C∗∣λ∣∥V∥∗, where ∥⋅∥∗ is the relevant interaction norm.
Our result allows polynomial decay of both the free coefficients and the many-body interaction. For two-site interactions on a uniformly discrete point set Γ⊂Rd, a sufficient condition is decay as (1+∣x−y∣)−ϖ with ϖ>2d, for both the hopping and pairing coefficients and the interaction terms. The spectral-flow generator preserves the spatial exponent of the polynomial interaction norm, and its automorphisms satisfy locality bounds at that exponent. If h and V have stretched-exponential decay, so does the spectral-flow generator.
The proof constructs the spectral flow and establishes the gap through an excitation-number comparison, using polynomial propagation bounds for evolved interactions proved in a companion paper.
Abstract This work clarifies a fundamental relationship between spectral gap and ground state properties, where the spectral gap means the energy difference between the ground state and the first excited state. In short-range interacting systems, the well-known exponential clustering theorem has been derived for the ground states: the bipartite correlations decay exponentially beyond a finite localization length, which is smaller than the inverse of the spectral gap. However, in more general systems including long-range interacting systems, the problem of how to characterize universal ground state structures by reference to the spectral gap is an ongoing challenge. Recently, for such systems, another fundamental constraint dubbed local reversibility has been proved for arbitrarily gapped ground states; as a consequence, it also results in the exponential concentration of the probability distribution of macroscopic observables. In this paper, we extend this kind of asymptotic behavior to more general setups.
We provide an analysis of the correlation properties of spin and fermionic systems on a lattice evolving according to open system dynamics generated by a local primitive Liouvillian. We show that if the Liouvillian has a spectral gap which is independent of the system size, then the correlations between local observables decay exponentially as a function of the distance between their supports. We prove, furthermore, that if the Log-Sobolev constant is independent of the system size, then the system satisfies clustering of correlations in the mutual information ‒ a much more stringent form of correlation decay. As a consequence, in the latter case we get an area law (with logarithmic corrections) for the mutual information. As a further corollary, we obtain a stability theorem for local distant perturbations. We also demonstrate that gapped free-fermionic systems exhibit clustering of correlations in the covariance and in the mutual information. We conclude with a discussion of the implications of these results for the classical simulation of open quantum systems with matrix-product operators and the robust dissipative preparation of topologically ordered states of lattice spin systems.