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Enforced Gaplessness from States with Exponentially Decaying Correlations

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arxiv 2503.01977 v2 pith:VHV3HI2N submitted 2025-03-03 cond-mat.str-el cond-mat.stat-mechquant-ph

Enforced Gaplessness from States with Exponentially Decaying Correlations

classification cond-mat.str-el cond-mat.stat-mechquant-ph
keywords correlationsloopbetaexponentiallygaplessgroundmuststate
verification ladder T0 review T1 audit T2 compute T3 formal T4 reserved
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It is well known that an exponentially localized Hamiltonian must be gapless if its ground state has algebraic correlations. We show that even certain exponentially decaying correlations can imply gaplessness. This is exemplified by the deformed toric code $\propto \exp(\beta \sum_{\ell} Z_{\ell}) |\mathsf{TC}\rangle$, where $|\mathsf{TC}\rangle$ is a fixed-point toric code wavefunction. Although it has a confined regime for $\beta > \beta_c$, recent work has drawn attention to its perimeter law loop correlations. Here, we show that these unusual loop correlations -- namely, perimeter law coexisting with a 1-form symmetry whose disorder operator has long-range order -- imply that any local parent Hamiltonian must either be gapless or have a degeneracy scaling with system size. Moreover, we construct a variational low-energy state for arbitrary local frustration-free Hamiltonians, upper bounding the finite-size gap by $O(1/L^3)$ on periodic boundary conditions. Strikingly, these variational states look like loop waves -- non-quasiparticle analogs of spin waves -- generated from the ground state by non-local loop operators. Our findings have implications for identifying the subset of Hilbert space to which gapped ground states belong, and the techniques have wide applicability. For instance, a corollary of our first result is that Glauber dynamics for the ordered phase of the two-dimensional classical Ising model on the torus must have a gapless Markov transition matrix, with our second result bounding its gap.

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Cited by 7 Pith papers

Reviewed papers in the Pith corpus that reference this work. Sorted by Pith novelty score.

  1. Gapped Parent Hamiltonians for the Strongly Deformed Toric Code

    cond-mat.str-el 2026-07 accept novelty 8.0

    Strongly deformed toric code states have local gapped parent Hamiltonians with exponentially decaying interactions, placing them in a trivial gapped phase despite perimeter-law Wilson loops.

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    cond-mat.str-el 2026-02 unverdicted novelty 8.0

    Symmetry spans enforce gaplessness when a symmetry E embedded into two larger symmetries C and D has no compatible gapped phase that restricts from both.

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