 XY exchange interaction

The isotropic XY exchange interaction between two qubits is $E=(X\otimes X+Y\otimes Y)/2$. Its action isIndeed, $X|0⟩=|1⟩$, $X|1⟩=|0⟩$, $Y|0⟩=i|1⟩$, and $Y|1⟩=-i|0⟩$. The two terms cancel on equal bits and add on unequal bits. Thus a network Hamiltonian operator $H={\sum }_{a,b}{K}_{ab}{E}_{ab}$ preserves excitation number; in the single-excitation subspace, it is the weighted adjacency matrix, moving an excitation from $a$ to $b$ with hopping coefficient $K_{ab}$.