We introduce the concept of concatenated tensor networks to efficiently describe quantum states. We show that the corresponding concatenated tensor network states can efficiently describe time evolution and possess arbitrary block-wise entanglement and long-ranged correlations. We illustrate the approach for the enhancement of matrix product states, i.e. one-dimensional (1D) tensor networks, where we replace each of the matrices of the original matrix product state with another 1D tensor network. This procedure yields a 2D tensor network, which includes—already for tensor dimension 2—all states that can be prepared by circuits of polynomially many (possibly non-unitary) two-qubit quantum operations, as well as states resulting from time evolution with respect to Hamiltonians with short-ranged interactions. We investigate the possibility of efficiently extracting information from these states, which serves as the basic step in a variational optimization procedure. To this aim, we utilize the known exact and approximate methods for 2D tensor networks and demonstrate some improvements thereof, which are also applicable e.g. in the context of 2D projected entangled pair states. We generalize the approach to higher dimensional and tree tensor networks.
We introduce the concept of concatenated tensor networks to efficiently describe quantum states. We show that the corresponding concatenated tensor network states can efficiently describe time evolution and possess arbitrary block-wise entanglement and long-ranged correlations. We illustrate the approach for the enhancement of matrix product states, i.e. one-dimensional (1D) tensor networks, where we replace each of the matrices of the original matrix product state with another 1D tensor network. This procedure yields a 2D tensor network, which includes—already for tensor dimension 2—all states that can be prepared by circuits of polynomially many (possibly non-unitary) two-qubit quantum operations, as well as states resulting from time evolution with respect to Hamiltonians with short-ranged interactions. We investigate the possibility of efficiently extracting information from these states, which serves as the basic step in a variational optimization procedure. To this aim, we utilize the known exact and approximate methods for 2D tensor networks and demonstrate some improvements thereof, which are also applicable e.g. in the context of 2D projected entangled pair states. We generalize the approach to higher dimensional and tree tensor networks.
We consider the representation of operators in terms of tensor networks and their application to the ground-state approximation and time evolution of systems with long-range interactions. We provide an explicit construction to represent an arbitrary many-body Hamilton operator in terms of a one-dimensional tensor network (i.e., as a matrix product operator). For pairwise interactions, we show that such a representation is always efficient and requires a tensor dimension growing only linearly with the number of particles. For systems obeying certain symmetries or restrictions we find optimal representations with minimal tensor dimension. We discuss the analytic and numerical approximation of operators in terms of low-dimensional tensor operators. We demonstrate applications for time evolution and the ground-state approximation, in particular for long-range interaction with inhomogeneous couplings. The operator representations are also generalized to other geometries such as trees and two-dimensional lattices, where we show how to obtain and use efficient tensor network representations respecting a given geometry.
Near-term quantum devices generally suffer from shallow circuit depth and hence limited expressivity due to noise and decoherence. To address this, we propose tensor-network-assisted parametrized quantum circuits, which concatenate a classical tensor-network operator with a quantum circuit to effectively increase the circuit's expressivity without requiring a physically deeper circuit. We present a framework for tensor-network-assisted variational quantum algorithms that can solve quantum many-body problems using shallower quantum circuits. We demonstrate the efficiency of this approach by considering two examples of unitary matrix-product operators and unitary tree tensor networks, showing that they can both be implemented efficiently. Through numerical simulations, we show that the expressivity of these circuits is greatly enhanced with the assistance of tensor networks. We apply our method to two-dimensional Ising models and one-dimensional time-crystal Hamiltonian models with up to 16 qubits and demonstrate that our approach consistently outperforms conventional methods using shallow quantum circuits.
Matrix product states and matrix product operators (MPOs) are one-dimensional tensor networks that underlie the modern density matrix renormalization group (DMRG) algorithm. The use of MPOs accounts for the high level of generality and wide range of applicability of DMRG. However, current algorithms for two-dimensional (2D) tensor network states, known as projected entangled-pair states, rarely employ the associated 2D tensor network operators, projected entangled-pair operators (PEPOs), due to their computational cost and conceptual complexity. To lower these two barriers, we describe how to reformulate a PEPO into a set of tensor network operators that resemble MPOs by considering the different sets of local operators that are generated from sequential bipartitions of the 2D system. The expectation value of a PEPO can then be evaluated on the fly using only the action of MPOs and generalized MPOs at each step of the approximate contraction of the 2D tensor network. This technique allows for the simpler construction and more efficient energy evaluation of 2D Hamiltonians that contain finite-range interactions, and provides an improved strategy to encode long-range interactions that is orders of magnitude more accurate and efficient than existing schemes.
These notes provide an introduction to tensor-network methods in quantum many-body physics, with an emphasis on matrix-product states (MPS). They develop the basic tensor-network language, including graphical notation, virtual indices, bond dimensions, gauge freedom, canonical forms, QR and singular-value decompositions, and the role of entanglement in controlling the efficiency of the representation. The main MPS algorithms are then introduced, including contractions, correlation functions, matrix-product operators, DMRG, and time-evolution methods. The notes also briefly discuss projected entangled-pair states (PEPS) as a higher-dimensional generalization of MPS, together with the basic ideas behind approximate PEPS contraction. Finally, tensor-network representations of mixed states, quantum channels, and Lindblad dynamics are presented, with applications to thermal states and open quantum systems. The presentation is accompanied by short Julia code examples based on ITensor, ITensorMPS, and TensorMixedStates. These notes were written for the 9th Les Houches Summer School on Computational Physics: Open Quantum Systems, held in June 2026.
Simulation of quantum systems is challenging due to the exponential size of the state space. Tensor networks provide a systematically improvable approximation for quantum states. 2D tensor networks such as Projected Entangled Pair States (PEPS) are well-suited for key classes of physical systems and quantum circuits. However, direct contraction of PEPS networks has exponential cost, while approximate algorithms require computations with large tensors. We propose new scalable algorithms and software abstractions for PEPS-based methods, accelerating the bottleneck operation of contraction and refactorization of a tensor subnetwork. We employ randomized SVD with an implicit matrix to reduce cost and memory footprint asymptotically. Further, we develop a distributed-memory PEPS library and study accuracy and efficiency of alternative algorithms for PEPS contraction and evolution on the Stampede2 supercomputer. We also simulate a popular near-term quantum algorithm, the Variational Quantum Eigensolver (VQE), and benchmark Imaginary Time Evolution (ITE), which compute ground states of Hamiltonians.
Tensor networks (TNs) have become one of the most essential building blocks for various fields of theoretical physics such as condensed matter theory, statistical mechanics, quantum information, and quantum gravity. This review provides a unified description of a series of developments in the TN from the statistical mechanics side. In particular, we begin with the variational principle for the transfer matrix of the 2D Ising model, which naturally leads us to the matrix product state (MPS) and the corner transfer matrix (CTM). We then explain how the CTM can be evolved to such MPS-based approaches as density matrix renormalization group (DMRG) and infinite time-evolved block decimation. We also elucidate that the finite-size DMRG played an intrinsic role for incorporating various quantum information concepts in subsequent developments in the TN. After surveying higher-dimensional generalizations like tensor product states or projected entangled pair states, we describe tensor renormalization groups (TRGs), which are a fusion of TNs and Kadanoff-Wilson type real-space renormalization groups, focusing on their fixed point structures. We then discuss how the difficulty in TRGs for critical systems can be overcome in the tensor network renormalization and the multi-scale entanglement renormalization ansatz.