Local Determinant Defects and Low-Energy Subspace Stability in Semifinite von Neumann Algebras

Abstract

We give a finite-temperature test for the stability of low-energy spectral subspaces. The test uses a local determinant defect for the alpha-z Renyi kernel of two Gibbs states and bounds the tracial L2 distance between their low-energy projections. The main tool is a spectral-flattening principle for bounded positive injective operators in a semifinite von Neumann algebra. It reduces the local product defect to an exact two-projection formula. The thermal result applies to lower-bounded affiliated Hamiltonians with trace-class Gibbs operators and does not require the Hamiltonians to be close in operator norm. We give an infinite-level example with unbounded Hamiltonians. For matrices, the result gives a sum of principal-angle remainders. For qubits, the defect and the thermal gaps determine the ground-state overlap exactly. The same estimate gives a uniform error bound for bounded observables in an effective low-energy model. We also prove the determinant inequalities, their equality cases, and z-monotonicity in matrix, finite, and semifinite settings.