Making almost commuting matrices commute (Q1048110)

It is shown that for every \(\varepsilon > 0\) there exists a \(\delta > 0\) such that for two Hermitian almost commutative \(N\)-by-\(N\) matrices satisfying \(\| {[A,B]} \| \leqslant \delta \), two Hermitian exactly commutative \(N\)-by-\(N\) matrices \(A',B'\) satisfying \(\|A - A'\| \leqslant \varepsilon (\delta ),\) \(\|B - B'\| \leqslant \varepsilon (\delta)\) may be explicitly constructed, which enable to give lower bounds on how small \(\delta\) must be in order to obtain a given error \(\varepsilon\). Tighter bounds in the case of block tridiagonal and tridiagonal matrices are provided. Finally, the application of the proposed construction to operators which arise in various quantum systems is presented and discussed.