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arXiv:1211.3935 · Physical Review B

Calculus of continuous matrix product states

Jutho Haegeman, J. I. Cirac, Tobias J. Osborne, Frank Verstraete

Published Aug 20, 2013• 86 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

We discuss various properties of the variational class of continuous matrix product states, a class of Ansatz states for one-dimensional quantum fields that was recently introduced as the direct continuum limit of the highly successful class of matrix product states. We discuss both attributes of the physical states, e.g., by showing in detail how to compute expectation values, as well as properties intrinsic to the representation itself, such as the gauge freedom. We consider general translation noninvariant systems made of several particle species and derive certain regularity properties that need to be satisfied by the variational parameters. We also devote a section to the translation invariant setting in the thermodynamic limit and show how continuous matrix product states possess an intrinsic ultraviolet cutoff. Finally, we introduce a new set of states, which are tangent to the original set of continuous matrix product states. For the case of matrix product states, this construction has recently proven relevant in the development of new algorithms for studying time evolution and elementary excitations of quantum spin chains. We thus lay the foundation for similar developments for one-dimensional quantum fields.

DOI
10.1103/physrevb.88.085118

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We discuss various properties of the variational class of continuous matrix product states, a class of Ansatz states for one-dimensional quantum fields that was recently introduced as the direct continuum limit of the highly successful class of matrix product states. We discuss both attributes of the physical states, e.g., by showing in detail how to compute expectation values, as well as properties intrinsic to the representation itself, such as the gauge freedom. We consider general translation noninvariant systems made of several particle species and derive certain regularity properties that need to be satisfied by the variational parameters. We also devote a section to the translation invariant setting in the thermodynamic limit and show how continuous matrix product states possess an intrinsic ultraviolet cutoff. Finally, we introduce a new set of states, which are tangent to the original set of continuous matrix product states. For the case of matrix product states, this construction has recently proven relevant in the development of new algorithms for studying time evolution and elementary excitations of quantum spin chains. We thus lay the foundation for similar developments for one-dimensional quantum fields.
The fertile new field of quantum information theory is inspiring new ways to study correlated quantum systems by providing fresh insights into the structure of their Hilbert spaces. One of the latest developments in this direction was the extension of the ubiquitous matrix-product-state constructions, epitomized by the density-matrix renormalization-group algorithm, to continuous space-time; so as to be able to describe low-dimensional field theories within a variational approach. Following the earlier success achieved for bosonic theories, we present the first implementation of a continuous matrix product state (cMPS) for spinfull non-relativistic fermions in 1D. We propose a construction of variational matrices with an efficient parametrization that respects the translational symmetry of the problem (without being overly constraining) and readily meets the regularity conditions that arise from removing the ultraviolet divergences in the kinetic energy. We tested the validity of our approach on an interacting spin-1/2 system with spin imbalance. We observe that the ansatz correctly predicts the ground-state magnetic properties for the attractive spin-1/2 Fermi gas, including a phase-oscillating pair correlation function in the partially polarized regime (the 1D correlate of the FFLO state). We shall also discuss how to generalize the cMPS ansatz to other situations.
We develop in full detail the formalism of tangent states to the manifold of matrix product states, and show how they naturally appear in studying time evolution, excitations, and spectral functions. We focus on the case of systems with translation invariance in the thermodynamic limit, where momentum is a well-defined quantum number. We present some illustrative results and discuss analogous constructions for other variational classes. We also discuss generalizations and extensions beyond the tangent space, and give a general outlook towards post-matrix product methods.
In these lecture notes we give a technical overview of tangent-space methods for matrix product states in the thermodynamic limit. We introduce the manifold of uniform matrix product states, show how to compute different types of observables, and discuss the concept of a tangent space. We explain how to variationally optimize ground-state approximations, implement real-time evolution and describe elementary excitations for a given model Hamiltonian. Also, we explain how matrix product states approximate fixed points of one-dimensional transfer matrices. We show how all these methods can be translated to the language of continuous matrix product states for one-dimensional field theories. We conclude with some extensions of the tangent-space formalism and with an outlook to new applications.
The central topic of this thesis is on the fermionic continuous matrix product states (cMPS) variational ansatz for many-body quantum systems in a one-dimensional (1D) continuum.The matrix product states (MPS) is a variational ansatz which has been tremendously successful for nearly two decades in efficiently approximating groundstate properties of low-dimensional quantum lattice systems.The MPS is intrinsically designed for discrete lattice systems, however, and the cMPS has been introduced in 2010 as a continuum analogue of the MPS, enabling the possibility to directly tackle systems of quantum gases and liquids without resorting to discretization of space.
I introduce a modification of continuous matrix product states (CMPS) that makes them adapted to relativistic quantum field theories (QFT). These relativistic CMPS can be used to solve genuine (1+11+11+1)-dimensional QFT without UV cutoff and directly in the thermodynamic limit. The main idea is to work directly in the basis that diagonalizes the free part of the model considered, which allows one to fit its short distance behavior exactly. This makes computations slightly less trivial than with standard CMPS. However, they remain feasible, and I present all the steps needed for the optimization. The asymptotic cost as a function of the bond dimension remains the same as for standard CMPS. I illustrate the method on the self-interacting scalar field, also known as the ${\ensuremath{\phi}}_{2}^{4}$ model. Aside from providing unequaled precision in the continuum, the numerical results obtained are truly variational, and thus provide rigorous energy upper bounds.
The generalization of matrix product states (MPS) to continuous systems, as proposed in the breakthrough Letter of Verstraete and Cirac [Phys. Rev. Lett. 104, 190405 (2010).PRLTAO0031-900710.1103/PhysRevLett.104.190405], provides a powerful variational ansatz for the ground state of strongly interacting quantum field theories in one spatial dimension. A continuous MPS (cMPS) approximation to the ground state can be obtained by simulating a Euclidean time evolution. In this Letter we propose a cMPS optimization algorithm based instead on energy minimization by gradient methods and demonstrate its performance by applying it to the Lieb-Liniger model (an integrable model of an interacting bosonic field) directly in the thermodynamic limit. We observe a very significant computational speed-up, of more than 2 orders of magnitude, with respect to simulating a Euclidean time evolution. As a result, a much larger cMPS bond dimension D can be reached (e.g., D=256 with moderate computational resources), thus helping unlock the full potential of the cMPS representation for ground state studies.