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arXiv:1612.04419 · New Journal of Physics

Time-dependent restricted-active-space self-consistent-field theory for bosonic many-body systems

Camille Lévêque, Lars Bojer Madsen

Published Apr 6, 2017• 42 citations
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Abstract

We develop an ab initio time-dependent wavefunction based theory for the description of a many-body system of cold interacting bosons. Like the multi-configurational time-dependent Hartree method for bosons (MCTDHB), the theory is based on a configurational interaction Ansatz for the many-body wavefunction with time-dependent self-consistent-field orbitals. The theory generalizes the MCTDHB method by incorporating restrictions on the active space of the orbital excitations. The restrictions are specified based on the physical situation at hand. The equations of motion of this time-dependent restricted-active-space self-consistent-field (TD-RASSCF) theory are derived. The similarity between the formal development of the theory for bosons and fermions is discussed. The restrictions on the active space allow the theory to be evaluated under conditions where other wavefunction based methods due to exponential scaling in the numerical effort cannot, and to clearly identify the excitations that are important for an accurate description, significantly beyond the mean-field approach. For ground state calculations we find it to be important to allow a few particles to have the freedom to move in many orbitals, an insight facilitated by the flexibility of the restricted-active-space Ansatz . Moreover, we find that a high accuracy can be obtained by including only even excitations in the many-body self-consistent-field wavefunction. Time-dependent simulations of harmonically trapped bosons subject to a quenching of their noncontact interaction, show failure of the mean-field Gross-Pitaevskii approach within a fraction of a harmonic oscillation period. The TD-RASSCF theory remains accurate at much reduced computational cost compared to the MCTDHB method. Exploring the effect of changes of the restricted-active-space allows us to identify that even self-consistent-field excitations are mainly responsible for the accuracy of the method.

DOI
10.1088/1367-2630/aa6319

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We develop an ab initio time-dependent wavefunction based theory for the description of a many-body system of cold interacting bosons. Like the multi-configurational time-dependent Hartree method for bosons (MCTDHB), the theory is based on a configurational interaction Ansatz for the many-body wavefunction with time-dependent self-consistent-field orbitals. The theory generalizes the MCTDHB method by incorporating restrictions on the active space of the orbital excitations. The restrictions are specified based on the physical situation at hand. The equations of motion of this time-dependent restricted-active-space self-consistent-field (TD-RASSCF) theory are derived. The similarity between the formal development of the theory for bosons and fermions is discussed. The restrictions on the active space allow the theory to be evaluated under conditions where other wavefunction based methods due to exponential scaling in the numerical effort cannot, and to clearly identify the excitations that are important for an accurate description, significantly beyond the mean-field approach. For ground state calculations we find it to be important to allow a few particles to have the freedom to move in many orbitals, an insight facilitated by the flexibility of the restricted-active-space Ansatz . Moreover, we find that a high accuracy can be obtained by including only even excitations in the many-body self-consistent-field wavefunction. Time-dependent simulations of harmonically trapped bosons subject to a quenching of their noncontact interaction, show failure of the mean-field Gross-Pitaevskii approach within a fraction of a harmonic oscillation period. The TD-RASSCF theory remains accurate at much reduced computational cost compared to the MCTDHB method. Exploring the effect of changes of the restricted-active-space allows us to identify that even self-consistent-field excitations are mainly responsible for the accuracy of the method.
Abstract We discuss the multispecies time-dependent restricted-active-space (RAS) self-consistent-field theory, an ab initio wavefunction-based theory for mixtures of ultracold atomic and molecular gases. We present the general theory, based on the time-dependent variational principle, and derive the equations of motion. The theory captures in a time-dependent setting, via the specification of the RAS scheme, different levels of approximation from the mean-field to the full-configuration interaction approach. To assess its accuracy and to illustrate its ability to identify correlation effects at successive approximation levels, we apply the theory to compute the ground state energy of a Bose–Bose mixture interacting through a harmonic potential, for which the exact ground state energy is known analytically. We focus on the case of an ideal Bose gas interacting with a few impurities. The intra-species interaction between the impurities is relatively strong compared to the inter-species interaction between the impurities and the ideal non-interacting Bose gas. For this system, we find that an accurate description of the ground state necessitates the possibility of the theory to account for few-particle excitations out of the condensed phase; a situation well accounted for by the present RAS theory for mixtures; and not within reach for approaches not incorporating orbital-restriction schemes.
The evolution of Bose-Einstein condensates is amply described by the time-dependent Gross-Pitaevskii mean-field theory which assumes all bosons to reside in a single time-dependent one-particle state throughout the propagation process. In this work, we go beyond mean field and develop an essentially exact many-body theory for the propagation of the time-dependent Schr\"odinger equation of NNN interacting identical bosons. In our theory, the time-dependent many-boson wave function is written as a sum of permanents assembled from orthogonal one-particle functions, or orbitals, where both the expansion coefficients and the permanents (orbitals) themselves are time-dependent and fully determined according to a standard time-dependent variational principle. By employing either the usual Lagrangian formulation or the Dirac-Frenkel variational principle we arrive at two sets of coupled equations of motion, one for the orbitals and one for the expansion coefficients. The first set comprises of first-order differential equations in time and nonlinear integrodifferential equations in position space, whereas the second set consists of first-order differential equations with time-dependent coefficients. We call our theory multiconfigurational time-dependent Hartree for bosons, or MCTDHB(M)\text{MCTDHB}(M)MCTDHB(M), where MMM specifies the number of time-dependent orbitals used to construct the permanents. Numerical implementation of the theory is reported and illustrative numerical examples of many-body dynamics of trapped Bose-Einstein condensates are provided and discussed. The convergence of the method with a growing number MMM of orbitals is demonstrated in a specific example of four interacting bosons in a double well.
In this work we develop a complete variational many-body theory for a system of NNN trapped bosons interacting via a general two-body potential. The many-body solution of this system is expanded over orthogonal many-body basis functions (configurations). In this theory both the many-body basis functions and the respective expansion coefficients are treated as variational parameters. The optimal variational parameters are obtained self-consistently by solving a coupled system of noneigenvalue---generally integro-differential---equations to get the one-particle functions and by diagonalizing the secular matrix problem to find the expansion coefficients. We call this theory multiconfigurational Hartree theory for bosons or MCHB(M)\mathrm{MCHB}(M)MCHB(M), where MMM specifies explicitly the number of one-particle functions used to construct the configurations. General rules for evaluating the matrix elements of one- and two-particle operators are derived and applied to construct the secular Hamiltonian matrix. We discuss properties of the derived equations. We show that in the limiting cases of one configuration the theory boils down to the well-known Gross-Pitaevskii and the recently developed multi-orbital mean fields. The invariance of the complete solution with respect to unitary transformations of the one-particle functions is utilized to find the solution with the minimal number of contributing configurations. In the second part of our work we implement and apply the developed theory. It is demonstrated that for any practical computation where the configurational space is restricted, the description of trapped bosonic systems strongly depends on the choice of the many-body basis set used, i.e., self-consistency is of great relevance. As illustrative examples we consider bosonic systems trapped in one- and two-dimensional symmetric and asymmetric double well potentials. We demonstrate that self-consistency has great impact on the predicted physical properties of the ground and excited states and show that the lack of self-consistency may lead to physically wrong predictions. The convergence of the general MCHB(M)\mathrm{MCHB}(M)MCHB(M) scheme with a growing number MMM is validated in a specific case of two bosons trapped in a symmetric double well.
In order to solve the many-boson Schr\"odinger equation we utilize the multiconfigurational time-dependent Hartree method for bosons (MCTDHB). To be able to attack larger systems and/or to propagate the solution for longer times, we implement a parallel version of the MCTDHB method, thereby realizing the recently proposed [Streltsov et al., Phys. Rev. A 81, 022124 (2010)] idea on how to construct efficiently the result of the action of the Hamiltonian on a bosonic state vector. As an illustrative example of its own interest, we study the real-space dynamics of repulsive bosonic systems made of N=12N=12N=12, 51, and 3003 bosons in triple-well periodic potentials. The ground state of this system is threefold fragmented. By suddenly strongly distorting the trap potential, the system performs complex many-body quantum dynamics. At long times it reveals a tendency to an oscillatory behavior around a threefold fragmented state. These oscillations are strongly suppressed and damped by quantum depletions. In spite of the richness of the observed dynamics, the three time-adaptive orbitals of MCTDHB(M=3M=3M=3) are capable of describing the many-boson quantum dynamics of the system for short and intermediate times. For longer times, however, more self-consistent time-adaptive orbitals are needed to correctly describe the nonequilibrium many-body physics. The convergence of the MCTDHB(MMM) method with the number MMM of self-consistent time-dependent orbitals used is demonstrated.
The exactly solvable quantum many-particle model with harmonic one- and two-particle interaction terms is extended to include time dependency. We show that when the external trap potential and interparticle interaction have a time dependency, the numerically exact solutions of the corresponding time-dependent many-boson Schr\"odinger equation are still available. We use these exact solutions to benchmark the recently developed multiconfigurational time-dependent Hartree method for bosons (MCTDHB) [Phys. Rev. Lett. 99, 030402 (2007); Phys. Rev. A 77, 033613 (2008)]. In particular, we benchmark the MCTDHB method for (i) the ground state; (ii) the breathing many-body dynamics activated by a quench scenario where the interparticle interaction strength is suddenly turned on to a finite value; (iii) the nonequilibrium dynamic for driven scenarios where both the trap- and interparticle-interaction potentials are time-dependent. Excellent convergence of the ground state and dynamics is demonstrated. The great relevance of the self-consistency and time adaptivity, which are the intrinsic features of the MCTDHB method, is demonstrated by contrasting the MCTDHB predictions and those obtained within the standard full configuration interaction method spanning a Fock space of the same size, but utilizing as one-particle basis set the fixed-shape eigenstates of the one-particle potential. Connections of the model's results to ultracold Bose-Einstein condensed systems are addressed.
We develop the multi-layer multi-configuration time-dependent Hartree method for bosons (ML-MCTDHB), a variational numerically exact ab initio method for studying the quantum dynamics and stationary properties of general bosonic systems. ML-MCTDHB takes advantage of the permutation symmetry of identical bosons, which allows for investigations of the quantum dynamics from few to many-body systems. Moreover, the multi-layer feature enables ML-MCTDHB to describe mixed bosonic systems consisting of arbitrary many species. Multi-dimensional as well as mixed-dimensional systems can be accurately and efficiently simulated via the multi-layer expansion scheme. We provide a detailed account of the underlying theory and the corresponding implementation. We also demonstrate the superior performance by applying the method to the tunneling dynamics of bosonic ensembles in a one-dimensional double well potential, where a single-species bosonic ensemble of various correlation strengths and a weakly interacting two-species bosonic ensemble are considered.