Approximating macroscopic observables in quantum spin systems with commuting matrices

Macroscopic observables in a quantum spin system are given by sequences of spatial means of local elements , n∈N, i=1,…,m in a UHF algebra. One of their properties is that they commute asymptotically, as n goes to infinity. It is not true that any given set of asymptotically commuting matrices can be approximated by commuting ones in the norm topology. In this paper, we show that for macroscopic observables, this is true.