Local observable errors from truncating interaction tails in gapped quantum lattice systems

Abstract

We bound the error in ground-state expectations of local observables caused by truncating the spatial tails of a gapped quantum lattice Hamiltonian. We show that the error is controlled by the interaction strength discarded near each site, rather than by the extensive norm of the omitted Hamiltonian. If the gap remains open along a path that removes the interaction tail, the resulting bounds are uniform in system size and extend, under suitable assumptions, to thermodynamic-limit ground states. The convergence rate reflects the decay of the interaction tail: it is algebraic for power-law interactions, superpolynomial for superpolynomial interactions, and exponential at any strictly smaller rate for exponentially decaying interactions. For superpolynomial interactions, we also derive a direct infinite-volume estimate using automorphic equivalence. The results extend to isolated low-energy sectors and parity-even fermionic systems. For two-body interactions decaying as $r^{-p}$ in $d$ dimensions, we prove an error bound $O(R^{-(p-d)})$ for $p>2d$, where $R$ is the truncation range. We construct a gapped non-translation-invariant example that saturates this scaling, showing that the bound is optimal for the general class considered. Our results quantify when finite-range truncations faithfully reproduce the local physics of gapped long-range systems.