Matthew B. Hastings

We show that any short-range Hamiltonian with a gap between the ground and excited states can be written as a sum of local operators, such that the ground state is an approximate eigenvector of each operator separately. We then show that the ground state of any such Hamiltonian is close to a generalized matrix product state. The range of the given operators needed to obtain a good approximation to the ground state is proportional to the square of the logarithm of the system size times a characteristic "factorization length". Applications to many-body quantum simulation are discussed. We also consider density matrices of systems at non-zero temperature.

Motivated by multi-objective optimization, we study extrema of a set of N points independently distributed inside the d-dimensional hypercube. A point in this set is k-dominated by another point when at least k of its coordinates are larger, and is a k-minimum if it is not k-dominated by any other point. We obtain statistical properties of these partial minima using exact probabilistic methods and heuristic scaling techniques. The average number of partial minima, A, decays algebraically with the total number of points, A ~ N^{-(d-k)/k}, when 1<=k<d. Interestingly, there are k-1 distinct scaling laws characterizing the largest coordinates as the distribution P(y_j) of the jth largest coordinate, y_j, decays algebraically, P(y_j) ~ (y_j)^{-alpha_j-1}, with alpha_j=j(d-k)/(k-j) for 1<=j<=k-1. The average number of partial minima grows logarithmically, A ~ [1/(d-1)!](ln N)^{d-1}, when k=d. The full distribution of the number of minima is obtained in closed form in two-dimensions.

We considered diffusion-driven processes on small-world networks with distance-dependent random links. The study of diffusion on such networks is motivated by transport on randomly folded polymer chains, synchronization problems in task-completion networks, and gradient driven transport on networks. Changing the parameters of the distance-dependence, we found a rich phase diagram, with different transient and recurrent phases in the context of random walks on networks. We performed the calculations in two limiting cases: in the annealed case, where the rearrangement of the random links is fast, and in the quenched case, where the link rearrangement is slow compared to the motion of the random walker or the surface. It has been well-established that in a large class of interacting systems, adding an arbitrarily small density of, possibly long-range, quenched random links to a regular lattice interaction topology, will give rise to mean-field (or annealed) like behavior. In some cases, however, mean-field scaling breaks down, such as in diffusion or in the Edwards-Wilkinson process in "low-dimensional" small-world networks. This break-down can be understood by treating the random links perturbatively, where the mean-field (or annealed) prediction appears as the lowest-order term of a naive perturbation expansion. The asymptotic analytic results are also confirmed numerically by employing exact numerical diagonalization of the network Laplacian. Further, we construct a finite-size scaling framework for the relevant observables, capturing the cross-over behaviors in finite networks. This work provides a detailed account of the self-consistent-perturbative and renormalization approaches briefly introduced in two earlier short reports.

We apply the technique of quasi-adiabatic continuation to study systems with continuous symmetries. We first derive a general form of Goldstone's theorem applicable to gapped nonrelativistic systems with continuous symmetries. We then show that for a fermionic system with a spin gap, it is possible to insert $\pi$-flux into a cylinder with only exponentially small change in the energy of the system, a scenario which covers several physically interesting cases such as an s-wave superconductor or a resonating valence bond state.

We show that any short-range Hamiltonian with a gap between the ground and excited states can be written as a sum of local operators, such that the ground state is an approximate eigenvector of each operator separately. We then show that the ground state of any such Hamiltonian is close to a generalized matrix product state. The range of the given operators needed to obtain a good approximation to the ground state is proportional to the square of the logarithm of the system size times a characteristic “factorization length.” Applications to many-body quantum simulation are discussed. We also consider density matrices of systems at non zero temperature.

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.

We define for quantum many-body systems a quasiadiabatic continuation of quantum states. The continuation is valid when the Hamiltonian has a gap, or else has a sufficiently small low-energy density of states, and thus is away from a quantum phase transition. This continuation takes local operators into local operators, while approximately preserving the ground-state expectation values. We apply this continuation to the problem of gauge theories coupled to matter, and propose the distinction of perimeter law versus “zero law” to identify confinement. We also apply the continuation to local bosonic models with emergent gauge theories. We show that local gauge invariance is topological and cannot be broken by any local perturbations in the bosonic models in either continuous or discrete gauge groups. We show that the ground-state degeneracy in emergent discrete gauge theories is a robust property of the bosonic model, and we argue that the robustness of local gauge invariance in the continuous case protects the gapless gauge boson.