Gappability Index for Quantum Many-Body Systems.

ABSTRACT

We propose an index I_{G} which characterizes the degree of gappability, namely the difficulty to induce a unique ground state with a nonvanishing excitation gap, in the presence of a symmetry G. I_{G} represents the dimension of the subspace of ambient uniquely gapped theories in the entire G-invariant "theory space." The celebrated Lieb-Schultz-Mattis theorem corresponds, in our formulation, to the case I_{G}=0 (completely ingappable) for the symmetry G including the lattice translation symmetry. We illustrate the usefulness of the index by discussing the phase diagram of spin-1/2 antiferromagnets in various dimensions, which do not necessarily have the translation symmetry.