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arXiv:1507.02202 · Physical review. B./Physical review. B

Simulating open quantum dynamics with time-dependent variational matrix product states: Towards microscopic correlation of environment dynamics and reduced system evolution

Florian A. Y. N. Schröder, Alex W. Chin

Published Feb 2, 2016• 118 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

We report the development of an efficient many-body algorithm for simulating open quantum system dynamics that utilizes a time-dependent variational principle for matrix product states to evolve large system-environment states. Capturing all system-environment correlations, we reproduce the nonperturbative, quantum-critical dynamics of the zero-temperature spin-boson model, and then exploit the many-body information to visualize the complete time-frequency spectrum of the environmental excitations. Our ``environmental spectra'' reveal correlated vibrational motion in polaronic modes which preserve their vibrational coherence during incoherent spin relaxation, demonstrating how environment information could yield valuable insights into complex quantum dissipative processes.

DOI
10.1103/physrevb.93.075105

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We report the development of an efficient many-body algorithm for simulating open quantum system dynamics that utilizes a time-dependent variational principle for matrix product states to evolve large system-environment states. Capturing all system-environment correlations, we reproduce the nonperturbative, quantum-critical dynamics of the zero-temperature spin-boson model, and then exploit the many-body information to visualize the complete time-frequency spectrum of the environmental excitations. Our ``environmental spectra'' reveal correlated vibrational motion in polaronic modes which preserve their vibrational coherence during incoherent spin relaxation, demonstrating how environment information could yield valuable insights into complex quantum dissipative processes.
We study the dynamics of the biased sub-Ohmic spin-boson model by means of a time-dependent variational matrix product state (TDVMPS) algorithm. The evolution of both the system and the environment is obtained in the weak- and the strong-coupling regimes, respectively characterized by damped spin oscillations and by a nonequilibrium process where the spin freezes near its initial state, which are explicitly shown to arise from a variety of reactive environmental quantum dynamics. We also explore the rich phenomenology of the intermediate-coupling case, a nonperturbative regime where the system shows a complex dynamical behavior, combining features of both the weakly and the strongly coupled case in a sequential, time-retarded fashion. Our work demonstrates the potential of TDVMPS methods for exploring otherwise elusive, nonperturbative regimes of complex open quantum systems, and points to the possibilities of exploiting the qualitative, real-time modification of quantum properties induced by nonequilibrium bath dynamics in ultrafast transient processes.
For complex molecules, nuclear degrees of freedom can act as an environment for the electronic "system" variables, allowing the theory and concepts of open quantum systems to be applied. However, when molecular system-environment interactions are non-perturbative and non-Markovian, numerical simulations of the complete system-environment wave function become necessary. These many body dynamics can be very expensive to simulate, and extracting finite-temperature results-which require running and averaging over many such simulations-becomes especially challenging. Here, we present numerical simulations that exploit a recent theoretical result that allows dissipative environmental effects at finite temperature to be extracted efficiently from a single, zero-temperature wave function simulation. Using numerically exact time-dependent variational matrix product states, we verify that this approach can be applied to vibronic tunneling systems and provide insight into the practical problems lurking behind the elegance of the theory, such as the rapidly growing numerical demands that can appear for high temperatures over the length of computations.
Understanding the emergent system-bath correlations in non-Markovian and non-perturbative open systems is a theoretical challenge that has benefited greatly from the application of Matrix Product State (MPS) methods. Here, we propose an autonmously adapative variant of the one-site Time-Dependent-Variational-Principle (1TDVP) method for many-body MPS wave-functions in which the local bond-dimensions can evolve to capture growing entanglement 'on the fly'. We achieve this by efficiently examining the effect of increasing each MPS bond-dimension in advance of each dynamic timestep, resulting in an MPS that can dynamically and inhomogeneously restructure itself as the complexity of the dynamics grows across time and space. This naturally leads to more efficient simulations, oviates the need for multiple convergence runs, and, as we demonstrate, is ideally suited to the typical, finite-temperature 'impurity' problems that describe open quantum system connected to multiple environments.
Recent tensor network techniques for simulating system-environment wave functions have provided profound insights into non-Markovian dissipation and decoherence in open quantum systems. Here, we propose a dynamically adaptive one-site time-dependent-variational-principle (A1TDVP) method for matrix product states in which local bond dimensions grow to capture developing system-bath entanglement. This avoids the need for multiple convergence runs with respect to bond dimensions and the unfavorable local Hilbert space scaling of two-site methods. A1TDVP is thus ideally suited for open quantum dynamics in finite-temperature bosonic environments, as the initial states typically have low bond dimension but require very large local physical dimensions. We demonstrate this with simulations of nonequilibrium heat flows through a qubit spin, finding a $30\ifmmode\times\else\texttimes\fi{}$ and $10\ifmmode\times\else\texttimes\fi{}$ speed-up over 2TDVP and 1TDVP, respectively.
Quantum many-body dynamics is difficult to simulate because the global wavefunction develops extensive complexity, whereas local observables may retain only an intrinsic, system-size-independent complexity. This distinction is especially relevant in thermalizing systems, where local subsystems lose microscopic information and relax towards equilibrium. We introduce a variational time-evolution principle that exploits this separation by replacing global-state fidelity with a cost function defined on local reduced density matrices. The resulting locally optimized matrix-product-state (LOMPS) algorithm retains coherent short-time dynamics while using the simplification generated by thermalization at later times, and admits closed-form equations of motion analogous to the time-dependent variational principle. The same principle yields a quantum-classical algorithm in which a quantum processor evaluates the local cost and a noise-robust classical procedure performs the optimization. Proof-of-principle implementations on Quantinuum H2 and IBM Heron processors recover the characteristic local dynamics.
Simulating the non-perturbative and non-Markovian dynamics of open quantum systems is a very challenging many body problem, due to the need to evolve both the system and its environments on an equal footing. Tensor network and matrix product states (MPS) have emerged as powerful tools for open system models, but the numerical resources required to treat finite-temperature environments grow extremely rapidly and limit their applications. In this study we use time-dependent variational evolution of MPS to explore the striking theory of Tamascelli et al. (Phys. Rev. Lett. 2019, 123, 090402.) that shows how finite-temperature open dynamics can be obtained from zero temperature, i.e., pure wave function, simulations. Using this approach, we produce a benchmark dataset for the dynamics of the Ohmic spin-boson model across a wide range of coupling strengths and temperatures, and also present a detailed analysis of the numerical costs of simulating non-equilibrium steady states, such as those emerging from the non-perturbative coupling of a qubit to baths at different temperatures. Despite ever-growing resource requirements, we find that converged non-perturbative results can be obtained, and we discuss a number of recent ideas and numerical techniques that should allow wide application of MPS to complex open quantum systems.