Long-Range Order, Tower of States, and Symmetry Breaking in Lattice Quantum Systems

In a quantum many-body system where the Hamiltonian and the order operator do not commute, it often happens that the unique ground state of a finite system exhibits long-range order (LRO) but does not show spontaneous symmetry breaking (SSB). Typical examples include antiferromagnetic quantum spin systems with Neel order, and lattice boson systems which exhibits Bose-Einstein condensation. By extending and improving previous results by Horsch and von der Linden and by Koma and Tasaki, we here develop a fully rigorous and almost complete theory about the relation between LRO and SSB in the ground state of a finite system with continuous symmetry. We show that a ground state with LRO but without SSB is inevitably accompanied by a series of energy eigenstates, known as the tower of states, which have extremely low excitation energies. More importantly, we also prove that one gets a physically realistic ground state by taking a superposition of these low energy excited states.