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arXiv:0811.4188 · Journal of Statistical Mechanics Theory and Experiment

Matrix product simulations of non-equilibrium steady states of quantum spin chains

Tomaž Prosen, Marko Žnidarič

Published Feb 1, 2009• 239 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

A time-dependent density matrix renormalization group method with a matrix product ansatz is employed for explicit computation of non-equilibrium steady state density operators of several integrable and non-integrable quantum spin chains, which are driven far from equilibrium by means of Markovian couplings to external baths at the two ends. It is argued that even though the time evolution cannot be simulated efficiently due to fast entanglement growth, the steady states in and out of equilibrium can be typically accurately approximated, with the result that chains of length of the order of n≈100 spins are accessible. Our results are demonstrated by performing explicit simulations of steady states and calculations of energy/spin densities/currents in several problems of heat and spin transport in quantum spin chains. A previously conjectured relation between quantum chaos and normal transport is re-confirmed with high accuracy for much larger systems.

DOI
10.1088/1742-5468/2009/02/p02035

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A time-dependent density matrix renormalization group method with a matrix product ansatz is employed for explicit computation of non-equilibrium steady state density operators of several integrable and non-integrable quantum spin chains, which are driven far from equilibrium by means of Markovian couplings to external baths at the two ends. It is argued that even though the time evolution cannot be simulated efficiently due to fast entanglement growth, the steady states in and out of equilibrium can be typically accurately approximated, with the result that chains of length of the order of n≈100 spins are accessible. Our results are demonstrated by performing explicit simulations of steady states and calculations of energy/spin densities/currents in several problems of heat and spin transport in quantum spin chains. A previously conjectured relation between quantum chaos and normal transport is re-confirmed with high accuracy for much larger systems.
Time-dependent density matrix renormalization group method with a matrix product ansatz is employed for explicit computation of non-equilibrium steady state density operators of several integrable and non-integrable quantum spin chains, which are driven far from equilibrium by means of Markovian couplings to external baths at the two ends. It is argued that even though the time-evolution can not be simulated efficiently due to fast entanglement growth, the steady states in and out of equilibrium can be typically accurately approximated, so that chains of length of the order n ~ 100 are accessible. Our results are demonstrated by performing explicit simulations of steady states and calculations of energy/spin densities/currents in several problems of heat and spin transport in quantum spin chains. Previously conjectured relation between quantum chaos and normal transport is re-confirmed with high acurracy on much larger systems.
We review recent progress on constructing non-equilibrium steady state density operators of boundary driven locally interacting quantum chains, where driving is implemented via Markovian dissipation channels attached to the chain's ends. We discuss explicit solutions in three different classes of quantum chains, specifically, the paradigmatic (anisotropic) Heisenberg spin- chain, the Fermi–Hubbard chain, and the Lai–Sutherland spin-1 chain, and discuss universal concepts which characterize these solutions, such as matrix product ansatz and a more structured walking graph state ansatz. The central theme is the connection between the matrix product form of nonequilibrium states and the integrability structures of the bulk Hamiltonian, such as the Lax operators and the Yang–Baxter equation. However, there is a remarkable distinction with respect to the conventional quantum inverse scattering method, namely addressing nonequilibrium steady state density operators requires non-unitary irreducible representations of Yang–Baxter algebra which are typically of infinite dimensionality. Such constructions result in non-Hermitian, and often also non-diagonalisable families of commuting transfer operators which in turn result in novel conservation laws of the integrable bulk Hamiltonians. For example, in the case of the anisotropic Heisenberg model, quasi-local conserved operators which are odd under spin reversal (or spin flip) can be constructed, whereas the conserved operators stemming from orthodox Hermitian transfer operators (via logarithmic differentiation) are all even under spin reversal.
We consider an open Heisenberg quantum spin chain, coupled at the ends to boundary reservoirs polarized in different directions, which sets up a twisting gradient across the chain. We derive a matrix product ansatz for the non-equilibrium density matrix. For the isotropic chain we calculate the exact magnetization profiles and magnetization currents in the nonequilibrium steady steady state of a chain with NNN sites. The magnetization profiles are harmonic functions with a frequency proportional to the twisting angle θ\thetaθ. The currents of the magnetization components lying in the twisting plane and in the orthogonal direction behave qualitatively differently: In-plane steady state currents scale as 1/N21/N^{2}1/N2 for fixed and sufficiently large boundary coupling, and vanish as the coupling increases, while the transversal current increases with the coupling and saturates to 2θ/N2\theta/N2θ/N.
Out-of-equilibrium dynamics of non-integrable Hamiltonian many-body quantum systems are characterized by highly entangled wave functions. Near-maximal entanglement arises in systems exhibiting thermalization or pre-thermalization, where the system converges to a steady state with a fixed energy density. Classical simulation of the time dependence of such wave functions requires exponential resources. However, typical computations aim to estimate expectation values of local operators and correlation functions to some expected precision. For thermalizing systems at sufficiently high energy densities, such computations can be done without storing the full wave function by instead simulating the evolution of the local operator, which requires significantly fewer resources. Nonetheless, constructing such resource-efficient classical algorithms remains a challenge for intermediate energy densities, where simulating both the wave function and operator evolution is costly. In this paper, we propose a heuristic approach to accelerate the convergence of Matrix Product State (MPS) simulations of expectation values, applicable across a broad range of energy densities. We estimate the desired observables by rescaling the MPS results at low bond dimensions with a factor that depends on the fidelity of the MPS wave function. Using this technique, we simulated the dynamics of the two-dimensional Transverse-Field Ising Model (TFIM) on a 7×87\times87×8 grid with periodic boundary conditions, using a maximum bond dimension of χ=4096χ= 4096χ=4096 on a single A100 GPU, as well as the dynamics of the two-dimensional XY model on grids of size up to 9×99\times99×9. We compare our TFIM results to similar simulations on a digital quantum processor [R. Haghshenas et al., Nature 653, 56 (2026)], demonstrating excellent agreement and confirming the predictive power of our method.
In the thesis we present an analytic approach towards exact description for steady state density operators of nonequilibrium quantum dynamics in the framework of open systems. We employ the so-called quantum Markovian semi-group evolution, i.e. a general form of time-autonomous positivity and trace-preserving dynamical equation for reduced density operators, by only allowing unitarity-breaking dissipative terms acting at the boundaries of a system. Such setup enables to simulate macroscopic reservoirs for different values of effective thermodynamic potentials, causing incoherent transitions between quantum states which are modeled with aid of the Lindblad operators. This serves as a simple minimalistic model for studying quantum transport properties, either in the linear response domain or in more general regimes far from canonical equilibrium. We are mainly exploring possibilities of identifying nonequilibrium situations which are amenable to exact description within matrix product state representation, by exclusively focusing on steady states, i.e. fixed points of the Lindblad equation, of certain prototypic interacting integrable spin chains driven by incoherent polarizing processes. Finally, we define a concept of pseudo-local extensive almost-conserved quantities by allowing a violation of time-invariance up to boundary-localized terms. We elucidate the role of such quantities on non-ergodic behaviour of temporal correlation functions rendering anomalous transport properties. It turns out that such conservation laws can be generated by means of boundary universal quantum transfer operators of the fundamental integrable models.
We conjecture that nonequilibrium boundary conditions generically trigger long-range order in nonequilibrium steady states of locally interacting quantum chains. Our result is based on large scale density matrix renormalization group simulations of several models of quantum spin-1/2 chains which are driven far from equilibrium by coupling to a pair of unequal Lindblad reservoirs attached locally to the ends of the chain. In particular, we find a phase transition from exponentially decaying to long-range spin-spin correlations in an integrable Heisenberg XXZ chain by changing the anisotropy parameter. Long-range order also typically emerges after breaking the integrability of the model.