TY - JOUR T1 - Ground-State Spaces of Frustration-Free Hamiltonians JF - Journal of Mathematical Physics Y1 - 2012 A1 - Jianxin Chen A1 - Zhengfeng Ji A1 - David Kribs A1 - Zhaohui Wei A1 - Bei Zeng AB - We study the ground-state space properties for frustration-free Hamiltonians. We introduce a concept of `reduced spaces' to characterize local structures of ground-state spaces. For a many-body system, we characterize mathematical structures for the set $\Theta_k$ of all the $k$-particle reduced spaces, which with a binary operation called join forms a semilattice that can be interpreted as an abstract convex structure. The smallest nonzero elements in $\Theta_k$, called atoms, are analogs of extreme points. We study the properties of atoms in $\Theta_k$ and discuss its relationship with ground states of $k$-local frustration-free Hamiltonians. For spin-1/2 systems, we show that all the atoms in $\Theta_2$ are unique ground states of some 2-local frustration-free Hamiltonians. Moreover, we show that the elements in $\Theta_k$ may not be the join of atoms, indicating a richer structure for $\Theta_k$ beyond the convex structure. Our study of $\Theta_k$ deepens the understanding of ground-state space properties for frustration-free Hamiltonians, from a new angle of reduced spaces. VL - 53 U4 - 102201 UR - http://arxiv.org/abs/1112.0762v1 CP - 10 J1 - J. Math. Phys. U5 - 10.1063/1.4748527 ER -