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arXiv:1310.0051 · Physical Review B

Density matrix embedding from broken symmetry lattice mean fields

Ireneusz W. Bulik, Gustavo E. Scuseria, J. Dukelsky

Published Jan 27, 2014• 126 citations
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Abstract

Several variants of the recently proposed density matrix embedding theory (DMET) [G. Knizia and G. K-L. Chan, Phys. Rev. Lett. 109, 186404 (2012)] are formulated and tested. We show that spin symmetry breaking of the lattice mean-field allows precise control of the lattice and fragment filling while providing very good agreement between predicted properties and exact results. We present a rigorous proof that at convergence this method is guaranteed to preserve lattice and fragment filling. Differences arising from fitting the fragment one-particle density matrix alone versus fitting fragment plus bath are scrutinized. We argue that it is important to restrict the density matrix fitting to solely the fragment. Furthermore, in the proposed broken symmetry formalism, it is possible to substantially simplify the embedding procedure without sacrificing its accuracy by resorting to density instead of density matrix fitting. This simplified density embedding theory (DET) greatly improves the convergence properties of the algorithm.

DOI
10.1103/physrevb.89.035140

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Several variants of the recently proposed density matrix embedding theory (DMET) [G. Knizia and G. K-L. Chan, Phys. Rev. Lett. 109, 186404 (2012)] are formulated and tested. We show that spin symmetry breaking of the lattice mean-field allows precise control of the lattice and fragment filling while providing very good agreement between predicted properties and exact results. We present a rigorous proof that at convergence this method is guaranteed to preserve lattice and fragment filling. Differences arising from fitting the fragment one-particle density matrix alone versus fitting fragment plus bath are scrutinized. We argue that it is important to restrict the density matrix fitting to solely the fragment. Furthermore, in the proposed broken symmetry formalism, it is possible to substantially simplify the embedding procedure without sacrificing its accuracy by resorting to density instead of density matrix fitting. This simplified density embedding theory (DET) greatly improves the convergence properties of the algorithm.
We extend our density matrix embedding theory (DMET) [Phys. Rev. Lett.2012, 109, 186404] from lattice models to the full chemical Hamiltonian. DMET allows the many-body embedding of arbitrary fragments of a quantum system, even when such fragments are open systems and strongly coupled to their environment (e.g., by covalent bonds). In DMET, empirical approaches to strong coupling, such as link atoms or boundary regions, are replaced by a small, rigorous quantum bath designed to reproduce the entanglement between a fragment and its environment. We describe the theory and demonstrate its feasibility in strongly correlated hydrogen ring and grid models; these are not only beyond the scope of traditional embeddings but even challenge conventional quantum chemistry methods themselves. We find that DMET correctly describes the notoriously difficult symmetric dissociation of a 4 × 3 hydrogen atom grid, even when the treated fragments are as small as single hydrogen atoms. We expect that DMET will open up new ways of treating complex strongly coupled, strongly correlated systems in terms of their individual fragments.
Density Matrix Embedding Theory (DMET) presents a novel approach in capturing the physics of strongly correlated systems. It essentially describes finite fragments in the presence of environment while explicitly allowing quantum entanglement between both. DMET has been remarkably successful in studying systems ranging from molecules to solids and the paradigmatic Hubbard model. In this talk, we will present extensions of DMET to systems that are allowed to break SU(2) spin symmetry as well as U(1) particle number symmetry. This will enable us to study a range of broken symmetry phases such as topological superconductivity and, more interestingly, their interplay with strong correlations.
We examine the performance of the density matrix embedding theory (DMET) recently proposed in Knizia and Chan [Phys. Rev. Lett. 109, 186404 (2012)]. The core of this method is to find a proper one-body potential that generates a good trial wave function for projecting a large-scale original Hamiltonian to a local subsystem with a small number of bases. The resultant ground state of the projected Hamiltonian can locally approximate the true ground state. However, the lack of the variational principle makes it difficult to judge the quality of the choice of the potential. Here we focus on the entanglement spectrum (ES) as a judging criterion; accurate evaluation of the ES guarantees that the corresponding reduced density matrix well reproduces all physical quantities on the local subsystem. We apply the DMET to the Hubbard model on the one-dimensional chain, zigzag chain, and triangular lattice, and test several variants of potentials and cost functions. It turns out that ES serves as a more sensitive quantity than the energy and double occupancy to probe the quality of the DMET outcomes. A symmetric potential reproduces the ES of the phase that continues from a noninteracting limit. The Mott transition as well as symmetry-breaking transitions can be detected by the singularities in the ES. However, the details of the ES in the strongly interacting parameter region depends much on these variants, meaning that the present DMET algorithm allowing for numerous variant is insufficient to fully characterize the particular phases that require characterization by the ES.
We introduce density matrix embedding theory (DMET), a quantum embedding theory for computing frequency-independent quantities, such as ground-state properties, of infinite systems. Like dynamical mean-field theory, DMET maps the bulk interacting system to a simpler impurity model and is exact in the noninteracting and atomic limits. Unlike dynamical mean-field theory, DMET is formulated in terms of the frequency-independent local density matrix, rather than the local Green's function. In addition, it features a finite, algebraically constructible bath of only one bath site per impurity site, with no bath discretization error. Frequency independence and the minimal bath make DMET a computationally simple and efficient method. We test the theory in the one-dimensional and two-dimensional Hubbard models at and away from half filling, and we find that compared to benchmark data, total energies, correlation functions, and metal-insulator transitions are well reproduced, at a tiny computational cost.
Quantum embedding methods enable the study of large, strongly correlated quantum systems by (usually self-consistent) decomposition into computationally manageable subproblems, in the spirit of divide-and-conquer methods. Among these, Density Matrix Embedding Theory (DMET) is an efficient approach that enforces self-consistency at the level of one-particle reduced density matrices (1-RDMs), facilitating applications across diverse quantum systems. However, conventional DMET is constrained by the requirement that the global 1-RDM (low-level descriptor) be an orthogonal projector, limiting flexibility in bath construction and potentially impeding accuracy in strongly correlated regimes. In this work, we introduce a generalized DMET framework in which the low-level descriptor can be an arbitrary 1-RDM and the bath construction is based on optimizing a quantitative criterion related to the maximal disentanglement between different fragments. This yields an alternative yet controllable bath space construction for generic 1-RDMs, lifting a key limitation of conventional DMET. We demonstrate its consistency with conventional DMET in appropriate limits and exploring its implications for bath construction, downfolding (impurity Hamiltonian construction), low-level solvers, and adaptive fragmentation. We expect that this more flexible framework, which leads to several new variants of DMET, can improve the robustness and accuracy of DMET.
We present a multiscale approach to efficiently embed an ab initio correlated chemical fragment described by its energy-weighted density matrices and entangled with a wider mean-field many-electron system. This approach, first presented by Fertitta and Booth [Phys. Rev. B 98, 235132 (2018)], is here extended to account for realistic long-range interactions and broken symmetry states. The scheme allows for a systematically improvable description in the range of correlated fluctuations out of the fragment into the system, via a self-consistent optimization of a coupled auxiliary mean-field system. It is discussed that the method has rigorous limits equivalent to the existing quantum embedding approaches of both dynamical mean-field theory and density matrix embedding theory, to which this method is compared, and the importance of these correlated fluctuations is demonstrated. We derive a self-consistent local energy functional within the scheme and demonstrate the approach for hydrogen rings, where quantitative accuracy is achieved despite only a single atom being explicitly treated.