Stability of energy gap of macroscopic quantum matter

Abstract

In quantum many-body physics and quantum field theory, it is often assumed that gapped systems remain gapped under sufficiently weak local perturbations. However, to what extent this assumption holds is elusive, except for some special systems. In this work, we examine the stability of energy gap of macroscopic quantum matter that is only subject to two physically natural conditions, locality and translation invariance. We first show that in any spatial dimension, there are gapped local Hamiltonians with a unique ground state and an unstable gap, i.e., they become gapless under certain arbitrarily weak local perturbation in the thermodynamic limit. We then prove that for both spin and fermionic systems in one dimension, such Hamiltonians with an unstable gap must not only break translation invariance but also be fine-tuned. We further show that in any dimension greater than one, there are fine-tuned local translation invariant Hamiltonians with a unique ground state and an unstable gap. These results greatly sharpen our understanding of the fundamental problem of the stability of quantum phases of matter. We also discuss implications of our results on, for example, anyon superconductivity and higher-form symmetries.