Abstract
We consider gapped systems governed by either quantum or Markov dynamics, with the low-lying states below the gap being approximately degenerate. For a broad class of dynamics, we prove that ground or stationary state correlation functions can be written as a piece decaying exponentially in space plus a term set by matrix elements between the low-lying states. The key to the proof is a local approximation to the negative energy, or annihilation, part of an operator in a gapped system. Applications to numerical simulation of quantum systems and to networks are discussed.
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