From Symmetries to Commutant Algebras in Standard Hamiltonians

Abstract

In this work, we revisit several families of standard Hamiltonians that appear in the literature and discuss their symmetries and conserved quantities in the language of commutant algebras. In particular, we start with families of Hamiltonians defined by parts that are local, and study the algebra of operators that separately commute with each part. The families of models we discuss include the spin-1/2 Heisenberg model and its deformations, several types of spinless and spinful free-fermion models, and the Hubbard model. This language enables a decomposition of the Hilbert space into dynamically disconnected sectors that reduce to the conventional quantum number sectors for regular symmetries. In addition, we find examples of non-standard conserved quantities even in some simple cases, which demonstrates the need to enlarge the usual definitions of symmetries and conserved quantities. In the case of free-fermion models, this decomposition is related to the decompositions of Hilbert space via irreducible representations of certain Lie groups proposed in earlier works, while the algebra perspective applies more broadly, in particular also to arbitrary interacting models. Further, the von Neumann Double Commutant Theorem (DCT) enables a systematic construction of local operators with a given symmetry or commutant algebra, potentially eliminating the need for "brute-force" numerical searches carried out in the literature, and we show examples of such applications of the DCT. This paper paves the way for both systematic construction of families of models with exact scars and characterization of such families in terms of non-standard symmetries, pursued in a parallel paper.