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arXiv:1207.0678 · Physical Review B

Dynamical windows for real-time evolution with matrix product states

Ho N. Phien, Guifré Vidal, Ian P. McCulloch

Published Jul 3, 2013• 17 citations
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Abstract

We propose the use of a dynamical window to investigate the real-time evolution of quantum many-body systems in a one-dimensional lattice. In a recent paper [Phien et al., Phys. Rev. B 86, 245107 (2012)], we introduced infinite boundary conditions in order to investigate real-time evolution of an infinite system under a local perturbation. This was accomplished by restricting the update of the tensors in the matrix product state to a finite region known as a window, with left and right boundaries held at fixed positions. Here we consider instead the use of a dynamical window, where the positions of left and right boundaries are allowed to change in time. In this way, all computational efforts can be devoted to the space-time region of interest, which leads to a remarkable reduction in simulation costs. For illustrative purposes, we consider two applications in the context of the spin-1 antiferromagnetic Heisenberg model in an infinite spin chain: one is an expanding window, with boundaries that are adjusted to capture the expansion in time of a local perturbation of the system; the other is a moving window of fixed size, where the position of the window follows the front of a propagating wave.

DOI
10.1103/physrevb.88.035103

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We propose the use of a dynamical window to investigate the real-time evolution of quantum many-body systems in a one-dimensional lattice. In a recent paper [Phien et al., Phys. Rev. B 86, 245107 (2012)], we introduced infinite boundary conditions in order to investigate real-time evolution of an infinite system under a local perturbation. This was accomplished by restricting the update of the tensors in the matrix product state to a finite region known as a window, with left and right boundaries held at fixed positions. Here we consider instead the use of a dynamical window, where the positions of left and right boundaries are allowed to change in time. In this way, all computational efforts can be devoted to the space-time region of interest, which leads to a remarkable reduction in simulation costs. For illustrative purposes, we consider two applications in the context of the spin-1 antiferromagnetic Heisenberg model in an infinite spin chain: one is an expanding window, with boundaries that are adjusted to capture the expansion in time of a local perturbation of the system; the other is a moving window of fixed size, where the position of the window follows the front of a propagating wave.
We propose a formalism to study dynamical properties of a quantum many-body system in the thermodynamic limit by studying a finite system with ``infinite boundary conditions'' where both finite-size effects and boundary effects have been eliminated. For one-dimensional systems, infinite boundary conditions are obtained by attaching two boundary sites to a finite system, where each of these two sites effectively represents a semi-infinite extension of the system. One can then use standard finite-size matrix product state techniques to study a region of the system while avoiding many of the complications normally associated with finite-size calculations such as boundary Friedel oscillations. We illustrate the technique with an example of time evolution of a local perturbation applied to an infinite (translationally invariant) ground state, and use this to calculate the spectral function of the S=1S=1S=1 Heisenberg spin chain. This approach is more efficient and more accurate than conventional simulations based on finite-size matrix product state and density-matrix renormalization-group approaches.
In recent work, Hartmann et al (2009 Phys. Rev. Lett. 102 057202) demonstrated that the classical simulation of the dynamics of open 1D quantum systems with matrix product algorithms can often be dramatically improved by performing time evolution in the Heisenberg picture. For a closed system this was exemplified by an exact matrix product operator (MPO) solution of the time-evolved creation operator of a quadratic fermi chain with a matrix dimension of just two. In this work, we show that this exact solution can be significantly generalized to include the case of an open quadratic fermi chain subjected to master equation evolution with Lindblad operators that are linear in the fermionic operators. Remarkably even in this open system the time evolution of operators continues to be described by MPOs with the same fixed dimension as that required by the solution of a coherent quadratic fermi chain for all times. Through the use of matrix product algorithms the dynamical behaviour of operators in this non-equilibrium open quantum system can be computed with a cost that is linear in the system size. We present some simple numerical examples that highlight how useful this might be for the more detailed study of open system dynamics. Given that Heisenberg picture simulations have been demonstrated to offer significant accuracy improvements for other open systems that are not exactly solvable, our work also provides further insight into how and why this advantage arises.
n recent work, Hartmann et al (2009 Phys. Rev. Lett. 102 057202) demonstrated that the classical simulation of the dynamics of open 1D quantum systems with matrix product algorithms can often be dramatically improved by performing time evolution in the Heisenberg picture. For a closed system this was exemplified by an exact matrix product operator (MPO) solution of the time-evolved creation operator of a quadratic fermi chain with a matrix dimension of just two. In this work, we show that this exact solution can be significantly generalized to include the case of an open quadratic fermi chain subjected to master equation evolution with Lindblad operators that are linear in the fermionic operators. Remarkably even in this open system the time evolution of operators continues to be described by MPOs with the same fixed dimension as that required by the solution of a coherent quadratic fermi chain for all times. Through the use of matrix product algorithms the dynamical behaviour of operators in this non-equilibrium open quantum system can be computed with a cost that is linear in the system size. We present some simple numerical examples that highlight how useful this might be for the more detailed study of open system dynamics. Given that Heisenberg picture simulations have been demonstrated to offer significant accuracy improvements for other open systems that are not exactly solvable, our work also provides further insight into how and why this advantage arises.
The Heisenberg antiferromagnet with discrete disorder on an infinite square lattice is evolved in time from an initial N\'eel state. The simulation is performed with the neighborhood tensor update algorithm for an infinite projected entangled pair state [Dziarmaga, Phys. Rev. B 104, 094411 (2021)]. Ancillary spins are used to average over two or five discrete values of disorder. With a bond dimension up to 20, evolution times are long enough to identify a many-body localized regime for a strong enough disorder. Furthermore, the same Hamiltonian is subject to periodic spin flips. Simulations of the Floquet dynamics show that it can sustain a time crystalline stage for a strong enough disorder.
Simulating quantum many-body systems (QMBS) is one of the long-standing, highly non-trivial challenges in condensed matter physics and quantum information due to the exponentially growing size of the system's Hilbert space. To date, tensor networks have been an essential tool for studying such quantum systems, owing to their ability to efficiently capture the entanglement properties of the systems they represent. One of the well-known tensor network architectures, namely matrix product states (MPS), is the standard method for simulating one-dimensional QMBS. Here, we propose a simple, yet efficient, method to augment the already available MPS algorithms to simulate the dynamics of time-dependent Hamiltonians with better accuracy and a faster convergence rate, giving a second-order convergence compared to the first-order convergence of the standard method. We apply our proposed method to simulate the dynamics of a chain of single spins associated with nitrogen-vacancy color centers in diamonds, which has potential applications for practical and scalable quantum technologies, and find that our method improves the average error for a system of few NV centers by a factor of about 1000 for moderate step sizes. Our work paves the way for efficient simulation of QMBS under the influence of time-dependent Hamiltonians.
We propose a method to simulate the real time evolution of one-dimensional quantum many-body systems at finite temperature by expressing both the density matrices and the observables as matrix product states. This allows the calculation of expectation values and correlation functions as scalar products in operator space. The simulations of density matrices in inverse temperature and the local operators in the Heisenberg picture are independent and result in a grid of expectation values for all intermediate temperatures and times. Simulations can be performed using real arithmetics with only polynomial growth of computational resources in inverse temperature and time for integrable systems. The method is illustrated for the XXZ model and the single impurity Anderson model.