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arXiv:1307.2287 · Physical Review A

Dynamical symmetry approach to path integrals of quantum spin systems

Matouš Ringel, Vladimir Gritsev

Published Dec 16, 2013• 29 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

We develop a dynamical symmetry approach to path integrals for general interacting quantum spin systems. The time-ordered exponential obtained after the Hubbard-Stratonovich transformation can be disentangled into the product of a finite number of the usual exponentials. This procedure leads to a set of stochastic differential equations on the group manifold, which can be further formulated in terms of the supersymmetric effective action. This action has the form of the Witten topological field theory in the continuum limit. As a consequence, we show how it can be used to obtain the exact results for a specific quantum many-body system which can be otherwise solved only by the Bethe ansatz. This represents an example of a many-body system treated exactly using the path-integral formulation. Moreover, our method can deal with time-dependent parameters, which we demonstrate explicitly.

DOI
10.1103/physreva.88.062105

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We develop a dynamical symmetry approach to path integrals for general interacting quantum spin systems. The time-ordered exponential obtained after the Hubbard-Stratonovich transformation can be disentangled into the product of a finite number of the usual exponentials. This procedure leads to a set of stochastic differential equations on the group manifold, which can be further formulated in terms of the supersymmetric effective action. This action has the form of the Witten topological field theory in the continuum limit. As a consequence, we show how it can be used to obtain the exact results for a specific quantum many-body system which can be otherwise solved only by the Bethe ansatz. This represents an example of a many-body system treated exactly using the path-integral formulation. Moreover, our method can deal with time-dependent parameters, which we demonstrate explicitly.
In both classical and quantum mechanics, a dynamical system with symmetry is reduced to a system which has a smaller number of degrees of freedom. In this paper we formulate path integrals for the quantum system reduced by symmetry. The original system is defined in terms of a Riemannian manifold M, on which a Lie group G acts by isometric transformations. Then we show that the path integral on M is reduced to a family of path integrals on a quotient space Q = M/G and that the reduced path integrals are classified by irreducible unitary representations of G. Stratification geometry of the set of spaces (M, Q), which is a generalization of the concept of principal fiber bundle, is used to describe the reduced path integral and consequently the path integral is expressed as a product of three factors; the rotational energy amplitude, which represents integration over the fiber directions, the vibrational energy amplitude, which represents integration over the directions perpendicular to the fiber, and the holonomy factor, which is caused by non-integrability of the vibrational directions. An attention is also paid for a singular point in Q, which arises when the group action of G on M is not free. We determine the boundary condition of the path integral kernel for a path which runs through the singularity.
We propose a Lie-algebraic duality approach to analyze nonequilibrium evolution of closed dynamical systems and thermodynamics of interacting quantum lattice models (formulated in terms of Hubbard-Stratonovich dynamical systems). The first part of the paper utilizes a geometric Hilbert-space-invariant formulation of unitary time evolution, where a quantum Hamiltonian is viewed as a trajectory in an abstract Lie algebra, while the sought-after evolution operator is a trajectory in a dynamic group, generated by the algebra via exponentiation. The evolution operator is uniquely determined by the time-dependent dual generators that satisfy a system of differential equations, dubbed here dual Schr\"odinger-Bloch equations, which represent a viable alternative to the conventional Schr\"odinger formulation. These dual Schr\"odinger-Bloch equations are derived and analyzed on a number of specific examples. It is shown that deterministic dynamics of a closed classical dynamical system occurs as action of a symmetry group on a classical manifold and is driven by the same dual generators as in the corresponding quantum problem. This represents quantum-to-classical correspondence. In the second part of the paper, we further extend the Lie-algebraic approach to a wide class of interacting many-particle lattice models. A generalized Hubbard-Stratonovich transform is proposed and it is used to show that the thermodynamic partition function of a generic many-body quantum lattice model can be expressed in terms of traces of single-particle evolution operators governed by the dynamic Hubbard-Stratonovich fields. The corresponding Hubbard-Stratonovich dynamical systems are generally nonunitary, which yields a number of notable complications, including breakdown of the global exponential representation. Finally, we derive Hubbard-Stratonovich dynamical systems for the Bose-Hubbard model and a quantum spin model and use the Lie-algebraic approach to obtain new nonperturbative dual descriptions of these theories.
Abstract While several tools have been developed to study the ground state of many-body quantum spin systems, the limitations of existing techniques call for the exploration of new approaches. In this manuscript we develop an alternative analytical and numerical framework for many-body quantum spin ground states, based on the disentanglement formalism. In this approach, observables are exactly expressed as Gaussian-weighted functional integrals over scalar fields. We identify the leading contribution to these integrals, given by the saddle point of a suitable effective action. Analytically, we develop a field-theoretical expansion of the functional integrals, performed by means of appropriate Feynman rules. The expansion can be truncated to a desired order to obtain analytical approximations to observables. Numerically, we show that the disentanglement approach can be used to compute ground state expectation values from classical stochastic processes. While the associated fluctuations grow exponentially with imaginary time and the system size, this growth can be mitigated by means of an importance sampling scheme based on knowledge of the saddle point configuration. We illustrate the advantages and limitations of our methods by considering the quantum Ising model in 1, 2 and 3 spatial dimensions. Our analytical and numerical approaches are applicable to a broad class of systems, bridging concepts from quantum lattice models, continuum field theory, and classical stochastic processes.
The core of this thesis is the path-integral formulation of quantum field theory and its ability to describe strongly-coupled quantum many-body systems of finite size. Collective behaviors can be efficiently described in such systems through the implementation of spontaneous symmetry breaking (SSB) in mean-field approaches. However, as the thermodynamic limit does not make sense in finite-size systems, the latter can not exhibit any SSB and the symmetries which are broken down at the mean-field level must therefore be restored. The efficiency of theoretical approaches in the treatment of finite-size quantum systems can therefore be studied via their ability to restore spontaneously broken symmetries. In this thesis, a zero-dimensional O(N)O(N)O(N) model is taken as a theoretical laboratory to perform such an investigation with many state-of-the-art path-integral techniques: perturbation theory combined with various resummation methods (Padé-Borel, Borel-hypergeometric, conformal mapping), enhanced versions of perturbation theory (transseries derived via Lefschetz thimbles, optimized perturbation theory), self-consistent perturbation theory based on effective actions (auxiliary field loop expansion (LOAF), Cornwall-Jackiw-Tomboulis (CJT) formalism, 4PPI effective action, ...), functional renormalization group (FRG) techniques (FRG based on the Wetterich equation, DFT-FRG, 2PI-FRG). Connections between these different techniques are also emphasized. In addition, the path-integral formalism provides us with the possibility to introduce collective degrees of freedom in an exact fashion via Hubbard-Stratonovich transformations: the effect of such transformations on the aforementioned methods is also examined in detail.
We discuss how one calculates the coherent path integrals for locally interacting systems, where some inconsistencies with exact results have been reported previously. It is shown that the operator ordering subtlety that is hidden in the local interaction term modifies the Hubbard-Stratonovich transformation in the continuous time formulation, and it helps reproduce known results by the operator method. We also demonstrate that many-body effects in the strong interaction limit can be well characterized by the free-particle theory that is subject to annealed random potentials and dynamical gauge (or phase) fields. The present treatment expands the conventional paradigm of the one-particle description, and it provides a simple, viable picture for strongly correlated materials of either bosonic or fermionic systems.
We derive general form of finite-dimensional approximations of path integrals for both bosonic and fermionic canonical systems in terms of symbols of operators determined by operator ordering. We argue that for a system with a given quantum Hamiltonian such approximations are independent of the type of symbols up to terms of O(ε), where ε is infinitesimal time interval determining the accuracy of the approximations. A new class of such approximations is found for both c-number and Grassmannian dynamical variables. The actions determined by the approximations are non-local and have no classical continuum limit except the cases of pq- and qp-ordering. As an explicit example the fermionic oscillator is considered in detail.