Convex-Gaussianity of fermionic Gibbs states in perturbation theory

Abstract

We study the structure of Gibbs states in weakly perturbed interacting fermionic systems. First, for a sparse Hamiltonian $H=H_0+V$ with a quadratic term $H_0$ and a non-quadratic perturbation $V$ of scale $ε$, we show that the Gibbs state $ρ_β$ decomposes into a convex combination of Gaussian states whenever the inverse temperature satisfies $β\le O(\log(1/ε))$. Moreover, we prove that this bound is asymptotically tight by establishing that $β\le Θ(\log(1/ε))$ is necessary for certain sparse Hamiltonians. This general framework applies directly to the weak-coupling (small-$\vert{}U\vert{}$) regime of the Fermi--Hubbard model with hopping $t$ and on-site interaction $U$ on any graph of maximum degree $D$. Complementarily, in the strong-coupling (small-$\vert{}t\vert{}$) regime, we show that the Gibbs state remains convex-Gaussian up to $β\le O\big(\vert{}U\vert{}^{-1}\log(\vert{}U\vert{}/(D\vert{}t\vert{}))\big)$, revealing a mechanism for convex-Gaussianity distinct from the weak-coupling setting.