We study a uniform matrix product state as a variational state for classical and quantum spin chains in the thermodynamic limit. Under a careful treatment of the translational symmetry, eigen values of the transfer matrix defined in the calculation of expectation values can reflect the periodicity of the ground state and indicate optimum periodicity of the matrix product state. We discuss the relation between the periodicity and accuracy of magnetization curves. This approach is free from the error due to finite system size, which works well especially for the magnetic plateau problem.
A variational ansatz for momentum eigenstates of translation-invariant quantum spin chains is formulated. The matrix product state ansatz works directly in the thermodynamic limit and allows for an efficient implementation (cubic scaling in the bond dimension) of the variational principle. Unlike previous approaches, the ansatz includes topologically nontrivial states (kinks, domain walls) for systems with symmetry breaking. The method is benchmarked using the spin-\textonehalf{}
XXZ antiferromagnet and the spin-1 Heisenberg antiferromagnet, and we obtain surprisingly accurate results.
We present a matrix product state (MPS) algorithm to approximate ground states of translationally invariant systems with periodic boundary conditions. For a fixed value of the bond dimension
D of the MPS, we discuss how to minimize the computational cost to obtain a seemingly optimal MPS approximation to the ground state. In a chain with
N sites and correlation length $\ensuremath{\xi}$, the computational cost formally scales as $g(D,\ensuremath{\xi}/N){D}^{3}$, where $g(D,\ensuremath{\xi}/N)$ is a nontrivial function. For $\ensuremath{\xi}\ensuremath{\ll}N$, this scaling reduces to
D3, independent of the system size
N, making our method
N times faster than previous proposals. We apply the algorithm to obtain MPS approximations for the ground states of the critical quantum Ising and Heisenberg spin-
1/2 models as well as for the noncritical Heisenberg spin-
1 model. In the critical case, for any chain length
N, we find a model-dependent bond dimension
D(N) above which the polynomial decay of correlations is faithfully reproduced throughout the entire system.
According to our scheme to construct quantum phase transitions (QPTs) in spin chain systems with matrix product ground states, we first successfully combine matrix product state (MPS) QPTs with spontaneous symmetry breaking. For a concrete model, we take into account a kind of MPS QPTs accompanied by spontaneous parity breaking, though for either side of the critical point the GS is typically unique, and show that the kind of MPS QPTs occur only in the thermodynamic limit and are accompanied by the appearance of singularities, diverging correlation length, vanishing energy gap and the entanglement entropy of a half-infinite chain not only staying finite but also whose first derivative discontinuous.
We present some exact results for the optimal matrix product state (MPS) approximation to the ground state of the infinite isotropic Heisenberg spin-1/2 chain. Our approach is based on the systematic use of Schmidt decompositions to reduce the problem of approximating for the ground state of a spin chain to an analytical minimization. This allows one to show that results of standard simulations, e.g. density matrix renormalization group and infinite time evolving block decimation, do correspond to the result obtained by this minimization strategy and, thus, both methods deliver optimal MPS with the same energy but, otherwise, different properties. We also find that translational and rotational symmetries cannot be maintained simultaneously by the MPS ansatz of minimum energy and present explicit constructions for each case. Furthermore, we analyze symmetry restoration and quantify it to uncover new scaling relations. The method we propose can be extended to any translational invariant Hamiltonian.
We present a variational matrix product state (vMPS) for the ground state of the spin-1/2 Heisenberg model. The MPS effectively organizes the various dimer configurations, in faithful reflection of the resonating valence bond picture of the spin liquid, with the energy only 0.024% higher than the exact value given by Bethe ansatz. Building on the ground-state vMPS, the one-spin wave function is constructed in a simple manner with the dispersion that matches well with the exact spectrum. The vMPS scheme is applied to the family of Hamiltonian extrapolating between the Heisenberg model and the Majumdar-Ghosh model.