The gap of Fredkin quantum spin chain is polynomially small

We prove a new result on the spectral gap and mixing time of a Markov chain with Glauber dynamics on the space of Dyck paths (i.e., Catalan paths) and their generalization, which we call colored Dyck paths. The proof uses the comparison theorem of Diaconis and Saloff-Coste and our previous results. Let $2n$ be the number of spins. We prove that the gap of the Fredkin quantum spin chain Hamiltonian [6, 20], is $\Theta(n^{-c})$ with $c\ge2$. Our results on the spectral gap of the Markov chain are used to prove a lower bound of $O(n^{-15/2})$ on the energy of first excited state above the ground state of the Fredkin quantum spin chain. We prove an upper bound of $O(n^{-2})$ using the universality of Brownian motion and convergence of Dyck random walks to Brownian excursions. Lastly, the 'unbalanced' ground state energies are proved to be polynomially small in $n$ by mapping the Hamiltonian to an effective hopping Hamiltonian with next nearest neighbor interactions and analytically solving its ground state.