Spectral gap and edge excitations of \(d\)-dimensional PVBS models on half-spaces (Q285556)

The authors extend the results of \textit{S. Bachmann} et al. [``Product vacua and boundary state models in \(d\) dimensions'', J. Stat. Phys. 160, No. 3, 636--658 (2015; \url{doi:10.1007/s10955-015-1260-7})] by considering the spin-1/2 model (corresponding to a single species of particles) on half-spaces in \(\mathbb Z^d\) bounded by an arbitrary hyperplane. The Hamiltonian has XXZ-type nearest neighbor interactions depending on parameters \(\lambda_j \in (0, \infty)\), one for each coordinate direction. The results of this work are proven by deriving upper and lower bounds on the spectral gap. For any given values of parameters, the authors prove an upper bound for the spectral gap above the unique ground states of these models, which vanishes for exactly one direction of the normal vector \(m\). For all other choices of \(m\), they derive a positive lower bound of the spectral gap except for the case \(\lambda_1=\dots =\lambda_d=1\), which is known to have gapless excitations in the bulk.