We investigate the relation between static correlation functions in the ground state of local quantum many-body Hamiltonians and the dispersion relations of the corresponding low energy excitations using the formalism of tensor network states. In particular, we show that the Matrix Product State Transfer Matrix (MPS-TM) - a central object in the computation of static correlation functions - provides important information about the location and magnitude of the minima of the low energy dispersion relation(s) and present supporting numerical data for one-dimensional lattice and continuum models as well as two-dimensional lattice models on a cylinder. We elaborate on the peculiar structure of the MPS-TM's eigenspectrum and give several arguments for the close relation between the structure of the low energy spectrum of the system and the form of static correlation functions. Finally, we discuss how the MPS-TM connects to the exact Quantum Transfer Matrix (QTM) of the model at zero temperature. We present a renormalization group argument for obtaining finite bond dimension approximations of MPS, which allows to reinterpret variational MPS techniques (such as the Density Matrix Renormalization Group) as an application of Wilson's Numerical Renormalization Group along the virtual (imaginary time) dimension of the system.
The truncation or compression of the spectrum of Schmidt values is inherent to the matrix product state (MPS) approximation of one-dimensional quantum ground states. We provide a renormalization group picture by interpreting this compression as an application of Wilson's numerical renormalization group along the imaginary time direction appearing in the path integral representation of the state. The location of the physical index is considered as an impurity in the transfer matrix and static MPS correlation functions are reinterpreted as dynamical impurity correlations. Coarse-graining the transfer matrix is performed using a hybrid variational ansatz based on matrix product operators, combining ideas of MPS and the multiscale entanglement renormalization ansatz. Through numerical comparison with conventional MPS algorithms, we explicitly verify the impurity interpretation of MPS compression, as put forward by V. Zauner et al. [New J. Phys. 17, 053002 (2015)] for the transverse-field Ising model. Additionally, we motivate the conceptual usefulness of endowing MPS with an internal layered structure by studying restricted variational subspaces to describe elementary excitations on top of the ground state, which serves to elucidate a transparent renormalization group structure ingrained in MPS descriptions of ground states.
(Please refer to arXiv:1810.08050, which has completely different aims but contains all the main contents of this paper) In this work, we propose to access the information of criticality and excitations of one-dimensional quantum systems by a matrix product state (MPS) defined in the (imaginary) time direction. This state, dubbed as time MPS (tMPS), is a boundary state of tensor network (TN) that represents the ground-state simulation after Trotter-Suzuki decomposition. We show that the tMPS exhibits the structure of the continuous MPS originally proposed for the field theories. The information of excitations, e.g., dynamic correlation length and energy gap, can be accurately calculated from the tMPS. The non-universal renormalization of velocity of the excitations is given by a ratio between the correlations of the ground state and the tMPS. When the system is at the quantum critical point, the tMPS is found to show the logarithmic scaling law, where the scaling coefficient gives the central charge that characterizes the criticality of the theory. Our work also implies that the spectra of the transfer matrices defined by the ground state and tMPS provide information of the low-lying masses of the theory in the continuous limit. This could help to understand the role of the finiteness of the bond dimension as an infra red regulator. Furthermore, we show from the perspective of methodology that, the tMPS emerges from a generalized TN ab-initio optimization principle scheme, which unifies the infinite density matrix renormalization group and the infinite time-evolving block decimation algorithms.
We discuss how to analytically obtain an essentially infinite matrix product state (MPS) representation of the ground state of the XY model. On one hand this allows us to illustrate how the Ornstein-Zernike form of the correlation function emerges in the exact case using standard MPS language. On the other hand we study the consequences of truncating the bond dimension of the exact MPS, which is also part of many tensor network algorithms, and analyze how the truncated MPS transfer matrix is representing the dominant part of the exact quantum transfer matrix. In the gapped phase we observe that the correlation length obtained from a truncated MPS approaches the exact value following a power law in effective bond dimension. In the gapless phase we find a good match between a state obtained numerically from standard MPS techniques with finite bond dimension and a state obtained by effective finite imaginary time evolution in our framework. This provides a direct hint for a geometric interpretation of finite entanglement scaling at the critical point in this case. Finally, by analyzing the spectra of transfer matrices, we support the interpretation put forward by V. Zauner et al. [New J. Phys. 17, 053002 (2015)] that the MPS transfer matrix emerges from the quantum transfer matrix though the application of Wilson's numerical renormalization group along the imaginary-time direction.
This thesis treats the classical simulation of strongly-interacting many-body quantum-mechanical systems in more than one dimension using matrix product states and the more general tensor product states. Contrary to classical systems, quantum many-body systems possess an exponentially larger number of degrees of freedom, thereby significantly complicating their numerical treatment on a classical computer. For this thesis two different representations of quantum many-body states were employed. The first, the so-called matrix product states (MPS) form the basis for the extremely successful density matrix renormalization group (DMRG) algorithm. While originally conceived for one-dimensional systems, MPS are in principle capable of describing arbitrary quantum many-body states. Using concepts from quantum information theory it is possible to show that MPS provide a representation of one-dimensional quantum systems that scales polynomially in the number of particles, therefore allowing an efficient simulation of one-dimensional systems on a classical computer. One of the key results of this thesis is that MPS representations are indeed efficient enough to describe even large systems in two dimensions, thereby enabling the simulation of such systems using DMRG. As a demonstration of the power of the DMRG algorithm, it is applied to the Heisenberg antiferromagnet with spin
S=1/2 on the kagome lattice. This model's ground state has long been under debate, with proposals ranging from static spin configurations to so-called quantum spin liquids, states where quantum fluctuations destroy conventional order and give rise to exotic quantum orders. Using a fully
SU(2)-symmetric implementation allowed us to handle the exponential growth of entanglement and to perform a large-scale study of this system, finding the ground state for cylinders of up to 700 sites. Despite employing a one-dimensional algorithm for a two-dimensional system, we were able to compute the spin gap (i.e. the energy gap to the first spinful excitation) and study the ground state properties, such as the decay of correlation functions, the static spin structure factors, and the structure and distribution of the nearest-neighbor spin-spin correlations. Additionally, by applying a new tool from quantum information theory, the topological entanglement entropy, we could also with high confidence demonstrate the ground state of this model to be the elusive gapped
Z2 quantum spin liquid with topological order. To complement this study, we also considered the extension of MPS to higher dimensions, known as tensor product states (TPS). We implemented an optimization algorithm exploiting symmetries for this class of states and applied it to the bilinear-biquadratic-bicubic Heisenberg model with spin
S=3/2 on the
z=3 Bethe lattice. By carefully analyzing the simulation data we were able to determine the presence of both conventional and symmetry-protected topological order in this model, thereby demonstrating the analytically predicted existence of the Haldane phase in higher dimensions within an extended region of the phase diagram. Key properties of this symmetry-protected topological order include a doubling of the levels in the entanglement spectrum and the presence of edge spins, both of which were confirmed in our simulations. This finding simultaneously validated the applicability of the novel TPS algorithms to the search for exotic order.
The term Tensor Network States (TNS) refers to a number of families of states that represent different ansätze for the efficient description of the state of a quantum many-body system.Matrix Product States (MPS) are one particular case of TNS, and have become the most precise tool for the numerical study of one dimensional quantum many-body systems, as the basis of the Density Matrix Renormalization Group method.Lattice Gauge Theories (LGT), in their Hamiltonian version, offer a challenging scenario for these techniques.While the dimensions and sizes of the systems amenable to TNS studies are still far from those achievable by 4-dimensional LGT tools, Tensor Networks can be readily used for problems which more standard techniques, such as Markov chain Monte Carlo simulations, cannot easily tackle.Examples of such problems are the presence of a chemical potential or out-of-equilibrium dynamics.We have explored the performance of Matrix Product States in the case of the Schwinger model, as a widely used testbench for lattice techniques.Using finite-size, open boundary MPS, we are able to determine the low energy states of the model in a fully non-perturbative manner.The precision achieved by the method allows for accurate finite size and continuum limit extrapolations of the ground state energy, but also of the chiral condensate and the mass gaps, thus showing the feasibility of these techniques for gauge theory problems.