Defect Bootstrap: Tight Ground State Bounds in Spontaneous Symmetry Breaking Phases

Abstract

The recent development of bootstrap methods based on semidefinite relaxations of positivity constraints has enabled rigorous two-sided bounds on local observables directly in the thermodynamic limit. However, these bounds inevitably become loose in symmetry broken phases, where local constraints are insufficient to capture long-range order. In this work, we identify the origin of this looseness as order parameter defects which are difficult to remove using local operators. We introduce a $\textit{defect bootstrap}$ framework that resolves this limitation by embedding the system into an auxiliary $\textit{defect model}$ equipped with ancilla degrees of freedom. This construction effectively enables local operators to remove order parameter defects, yielding tighter bounds in phases with spontaneous symmetry breaking. This approach can be applied broadly to pairwise-interacting local lattice models with discrete or continuous internal symmetries that satisfy a property we call $\textit{defect diamagnetism}$, which requires that the ground state energy does not decrease upon adding any finite number of symmetry defects. Applying the method to the transverse field Ising models in 1D and 2D, we obtain significantly improved bounds on energy densities and spin correlation functions throughout the symmetry broken phase in 1D and deep within the phase in 2D. Our results demonstrate that physically motivated constraint sets can dramatically enhance the power of bootstrap methods for quantum many-body systems.