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Approximating the ground state of gapped quantum spin systems

Spyridon Michalakis

Published Feb 5, 2024• 0 citations
OpenAlex

Abstract

We consider quantum spin systems defined on finite sets V equipped with a metric. In typical examples, V is a large, but finite subset of Z{sup d}. For finite range Hamiltonians with uniformly bounded interaction terms and a unique, gapped ground state, we demonstrate a locality property of the corresponding ground state projector. In such systems, this ground state projector can be approximated by the product of observables with quantifiable supports. In fact, given any subset {chi} {contained_in} V the ground state projector can be approximated by the product of two projections, one supported on {chi} and one supported on {chi}{sup c}, and a bounded observable supported on a boundary region in such a way that as the boundary region increases, the approximation becomes better. Such an approximation was useful in proving an area law in one dimension, and this result corresponds to a multi-dimensional analogue.

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Abstract. We consider quantum spin systems defined on finite sets V equipped with a metric. In typical examples, V is a large, but finite subset of Z d. For finite range Hamiltonians with uniformly bounded interaction terms and a unique, gapped ground state, we demonstrate a locality property of the corresponding ground state projector. In such systems, this ground state projector can be approximated by the product of observables with quantifiable supports. In fact, given any subset X ⊂ V the ground state projector can be approximated by the product of two projections, one supported on X and one supported on X c, and a bounded observable supported on a boundary region in such a way that as the boundary region increases, the approximation becomes better. Such an approximation was useful in proving an area law in one dimension, and this result corresponds to a multi-dimensional analogue. 1.

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We consider quantum spin systems defined on finite sets V equipped with a metric. In typical examples, V is a large, but finite subset of Z{sup d}. For finite range Hamiltonians with uniformly bounded interaction terms and a unique, gapped ground state, we demonstrate a locality property of the corresponding ground state projector. In such systems, this ground state projector can be approximated by the product of observables with quantifiable supports. In fact, given any subset {chi} {contained_in} V the ground state projector can be approximated by the product of two projections, one supported on {chi} and one supported on {chi}{sup c}, and a bounded observable supported on a boundary region in such a way that as the boundary region increases, the approximation becomes better. Such an approximation was useful in proving an area law in one dimension, and this result corresponds to a multi-dimensional analogue.
Abstract. We consider quantum spin systems defined on finite sets V equipped with a metric. In typical examples, V is a large, but finite subset of Z d. For finite range Hamiltonians with uniformly bounded interaction terms and a unique, gapped ground state, we demonstrate a locality property of the corresponding ground state projector. In such systems, this ground state projector can be approximated by the product of observables with quantifiable supports. In fact, given any subset X ⊂ V the ground state projector can be approximated by the product of two projections, one supported on X and one supported on X c, and a bounded observable supported on a boundary region in such a way that as the boundary region increases, the approximation becomes better. Such an approximation was useful in proving an area law in one dimension, and this result corresponds to a multi-dimensional analogue. 1.
We consider quantum spin systems defined on finite sets V equipped with a metric. In typical examples, V is a large, but finite subset of Zd. For finite range Hamiltonians with uniformly bounded interaction terms and a unique, gapped ground state, we demonstrate a locality property of the corresponding ground state projector. In such systems, this ground state projector can be approximated by the product of observables with quantifiable supports. In fact, given any subset X⊂V the ground state projector can be approximated by the product of two projections, one supported on X and one supported on Xc, and a bounded observable supported on a boundary region in such a way that as the boundary region increases, the approximation becomes better. This result generalizes to multidimensional models, a result of Hastings that was an important part of his proof of an area law in one dimension [“An area law for one dimensional quantum systems,” J. Stat. Mech.: Theory Exp. 2007, 08024].
We prove that the entanglement entropy of the ground state of a locally gapped frustration-free 2D lattice spin system satisfies an area law with respect to a vertical bipartition of the lattice into left and right regions. We first establish that the ground state projector of any locally gapped frustration-free 1D spin system can be approximated to within error є by a degree O(√nlog(є−1)) multivariate polynomial in the interaction terms of the Hamiltonian. This generalizes the optimal bound on the approximate degree of the boolean AND function, which corresponds to the special case of commuting Hamiltonian terms. For 2D spin systems we then construct an approximate ground state projector (AGSP) that employs the optimal 1D approximation in the vicinity of the boundary of the bipartition of interest. This AGSP has sufficiently low entanglement and error to establish the area law using a known technique.
Motivated by the study of area laws for the entanglement entropy of gapped ground states of quantum spin systems and their stability, we prove that the unitary cocycle generated by a local time-dependent Hamiltonian can be approximated, for any finite set X, by a tensor product of the corresponding unitaries in X and its complement, multiplied by a dynamics strictly supported in the neighbourhood of the surface ∂X. The error decays almost exponentially in the size of the neighbourhood and grows with the square of the area |∂X|2.
We begin by deriving bounds for the entanglement of a spin with an (adjacent and non-adjacent) interval of spins in an arbitrary pure Finitely Correlated States (FCS). The bounds we derive become exact in the case where one considers the entanglement of a single spin with a half-infinite chain to the right of it. Our result permits a more efficient calculation, numerically and in some cases even analytically, of the entanglement in arbitrary finitely correlated quantum spin chains. We continue the study of entanglement in the setting of ground states of Hamiltonians with a spectral gap. In particular, for VVV a finite subset of ZdZ^dZd, we let HVH_VHV​ denote a Hamiltonian on VVV with finite range, finite strength interactions and a unique ground state with a non-vanishing spectral gap. For a density matrix ρAρ_AρA​ that describes the finite-volume restriction to a region AAA of the unique ground state, we provide a detailed version of a proof by M. Hastings, that the entropy of ρAρ_AρA​ is bounded by a uniform constant CCC. Moreover, we provide a detailed generalization of the 1-dimensional construction of Hastings' approximation to the ground state in dimensions 2 and higher. Finally, we turn our attention to the study of a conjecture central to Quantum Information Theory, the multiplicativity of the maximal output Schatten ppp-norm of quantum channels, for p>1p > 1p>1. In particular, we study the output 2-norm for a special class of quantum channels, the depolarized Werner-Holevo channels, and show that multiplicativity holds for a product of two identical channels in this class.
We introduce the boundary effect on the ground state as an attribute of general local spin systems that restricts the correlations in the ground state. To this end, we introduce what we call a boundary effect function, which characterizes not only the boundary effect, but also the thermodynamic limit of the ground state. We prove various aspects of the boundary effect function to unfold its relationship to other attributes of the system such as a finite spectral gap above the ground state, two-point correlation functions, and entanglement entropies. In particular, it is proven that an exponentially decaying boundary effect function implies the exponential clustering of two-point correlation functions in arbitrary spatial dimension, the entanglement area law in one-dimension, and the logarithmically corrected area law in higher dimension. It is also proven that gapped local spin systems with nondegenerate ground states ordinarily fall into that class. In one-dimension, the area law can also result from a moderately decaying boundary effect function, in which case the system is thermodynamically gapless.