TY - JOUR AB - Based on a result by Yarotsky (J Stat Phys 118, 2005), we prove that localized but otherwise arbitrary perturbations of weakly interacting quantum spin systems with uniformly gapped on-site terms change the ground state of such a system only locally, even if they close the spectral gap. We call this a strong version of the local perturbations perturb locally (LPPL) principle which is known to hold for much more general gapped systems, but only for perturbations that do not close the spectral gap of the Hamiltonian. We also extend this strong LPPL-principle to Hamiltonians that have the appropriate structure of gapped on-site terms and weak interactions only locally in some region of space. While our results are technically corollaries to a theorem of Yarotsky, we expect that the paradigm of systems with a locally gapped ground state that is completely insensitive to the form of the Hamiltonian elsewhere extends to other situations and has important physical consequences. AU - Henheik, Sven Joscha AU - Teufel, Stefan AU - Wessel, Tom ID - 10642 IS - 1 JF - Letters in Mathematical Physics KW - mathematical physics KW - statistical and nonlinear physics SN - 0377-9017 TI - Local stability of ground states in locally gapped and weakly interacting quantum spin systems VL - 112 ER -