Numerical investigations of the XY model, the Heisenberg model and the J-J' Heisenberg model are conducted, using the exact diagonalisation, the numerical renormalisation and the density matrix renormalisation group approach. The low-lying energy levels are obtained and finite size scaling is performed to estimate the bulk limit values. The results are found to be consistent with the exact values. The DMRG results are found to be most promising. The Schwinger model is also studied using the exact diagonalisation and the strong coupling expansion. The massless, the massive model and the model with a background electric field are explored. Ground state energy, scalar and vector particle masses and order parameters are examined. The achieved values are observed to be consistent with previous results and theoretical predictions. Path to the future studies is outlined.
We perform a numerical analysis of the massive Schwinger model in the presence of a background electric field. Using the Density Matrix Renormalization Group approach, we efficiently compute the spectrum of the Schwinger model on a staggered lattice with up to 3000 qubits. As a result, we achieve a precise computation of the critical mass of the massive Schwinger model to five digits using four different “criticality criteria,” observing perfect agreement among them Additionally, we discuss the effect of a four-fermion operator deformation of the Schwinger model and compute the critical mass for various values of the deformation parameter.
The massive Schwinger model is studied using a density matrix renormalization group approach to the staggered lattice Hamiltonian version of the model. Lattice sizes up to 256 sites are calculated, and the estimates in the continuum limit are almost two orders of magnitude more accurate than previous calculations. Coleman's picture of ``half-asymptotic'' particles at a background field $\ensuremath{\theta}=\ensuremath{\pi}$ is confirmed. The predicted phase transition at finite fermion mass
(m/g) is accurately located and demonstrated to belong in the 2D Ising universality class.
We study the ground-state properties of a class of
Zn lattice gauge theories in
1+1 dimensions, in which the gauge fields are coupled to spinless fermionic matter. These models, stemming from discrete representations of the Weyl commutator for the U(1) group, preserve the unitary character of the minimal coupling and have, therefore, the property of formally approximating lattice quantum electrodynamics in one spatial dimension in the large-
n limit. The numerical study of such approximated theories is important to determine their effectiveness in reproducing the main features and phenomenology of the target theory, in view of implementations of cold-atom quantum simulators of QED. In this paper, we study the cases $n=2\textdiv{}8$ by means of a DMRG code that exactly implements Gauss's law. We perform a careful scaling analysis and show that, in absence of a background field, all
Zn models exhibit a phase transition which falls in the Ising universality class, with spontaneous symmetry breaking of the
CP symmetry. We then perform the large-
n limit and find that the asymptotic values of the critical parameters approach the ones obtained for the known phase transition of the zero-charge sector of the massive Schwinger model, which occurs at negative mass.
In this thesis we discuss in detail the density-matrix renormalization group (DMRG) for simulating low-energy properties of quantum spin models. We implement an original DMRG routine on the S=1/2 antiferromagnetic Heisenberg chain and benchmark its efficiency against exact results (energies, correlation functions, etc.) as well as conformal field-theoretical calculations due to finite-size scaling (ground-state energy and spin gap logarithmic corrections). Moreover, we apply the DMRG to a two-leg square ladder system, where in addition to bilinear exchange terms, we also consider an additional cyclic four-spin ring-exchange. The transposition of four spins gives rise to biquadratic exchange terms which are non-trivial to implement in the DMRG. Intermediate results of the ring-exchange are presented along with the difficulties presently encountered.
The density matrix renormalization group (DMRG) is a numerical method for studying low dimensional strongly correlated models. The study of these models is one of the most active areas of condensed matter physics today and has been spurred not only by the discovery of high temperature superconductivity but also by experiments on new compounds. In this thesis we study fundamentals of the density matrix renormalization group method as well as applications of the method to Heisenberg spin chains. The introductory text is meant as a brief overview of the DMRG as well as Heisenberg spin systems and provides an introduction to the papers. In papers I and II we investigate the density matrix renormalization group with the aim to better understand the underlying structure of the method. We find that if the renormalization converges to a fixed point in the thermodynamic limit, the resulting basis states can be written as a matrix product form. We also show an explicit relation of the DMRG to variational calculations using the fact that the matrix product states can be rederived through a variational ansatz without any reference to the DMRG calculation. It is then shown how the matrix product states can be used to define a set of Bloch waves for describing elementary excitations of the Heisenberg spin-1 chain. The low lying energy spectrum is calculated. In papers III and IV we investigate the thermodynamics of impurities in a spin-1/2 chain. For this purpose we have shown that a recently developed transfer matrix DMRG method can be used to calculate impurity properties. Both impurity corrections to thermodynamic properties and local properties at finite temperature can be obtained. The method gives quicker and more accurate results than quantum Monte Carlo. The numerical results show good agreement with field theory calculations for a number of impurity configurations and the cross-over function for the magnetic susceptibility from high- to low-temperature behavior shows the expected data collapse. Our results also give quantitative predictions for experiments on doped spin-1/2 chains.
These lecture notes introduce quantum spin systems and several computational methods for studying their ground-state and finite-temperature properties. Symmetry-breaking and critical phenomena are first discussed in the simpler setting of Monte Carlo studies of classical spin systems, to illustrate finite-size scaling at continuous and first-order phase transitions. Exact diagonalization and quantum Monte Carlo (stochastic series expansion) algorithms and their computer implementations are then discussed in detail. Applications of the methods are illustrated by results for some of the most essential models in quantum magnetism, such as the S=1/2 Heisenberg antiferromagnet in one and two dimensions, as well as extended models useful for studying quantum phase transitions between antiferromagnetic and magnetically disordered states.