 Detectability lemma

In a nearest-neighbour frustration-free Hamiltonian chain, multiply the bond orthogonal projections in two disjoint alternating layers. The resulting product $K$ fixes the common ground state space but contracts its orthogonal complement by a factor bounded away from one in terms of the spectral gap. A bound $\Vert K{|}_{\mathrm{supp}H}\Vert \le (1+\Delta /2{)}^{-1/3}$ implies exponentially convergent powers. The product is generally neither Hermitian nor normal.