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arXiv:1806.07443 · Journal of Chemical Theory and Computation

Time-Dependent Density Matrix Renormalization Group Algorithms for Nearly Exact Absorption and Fluorescence Spectra of Molecular Aggregates at Both Zero and Finite Temperature

Jiajun Ren, Zhigang Shuai, Garnet Kin‐Lic Chan

Published Aug 27, 2018• 121 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

We implement and apply time-dependent density matrix renormalization group (TD-DMRG) algorithms at zero and finite temperature to compute the linear absorption and fluorescence spectra of molecular aggregates. Our implementation is within a matrix product state/operator framework with an explicit treatment of the excitonic and vibrational degrees of freedom, and it uses the locality of the Hamiltonian in the zero-exciton space to improve the efficiency and accuracy of the calculations. We demonstrate the power of the method by calculations on several molecular aggregate models, comparing our results against those from multilayer multiconfiguration time-dependent Hartree and n-particle approximations. We find that TD-DMRG provides an accurate and efficient route to calculate the spectrum of molecular aggregates.

DOI
10.1021/acs.jctc.8b00628

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We implement and apply time-dependent density matrix renormalization group (TD-DMRG) algorithms at zero and finite temperature to compute the linear absorption and fluorescence spectra of molecular aggregates. Our implementation is within a matrix product state/operator framework with an explicit treatment of the excitonic and vibrational degrees of freedom, and it uses the locality of the Hamiltonian in the zero-exciton space to improve the efficiency and accuracy of the calculations. We demonstrate the power of the method by calculations on several molecular aggregate models, comparing our results against those from multilayer multiconfiguration time-dependent Hartree and n-particle approximations. We find that TD-DMRG provides an accurate and efficient route to calculate the spectrum of molecular aggregates.
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Dynamical electronic- and vibrational-structure theories have received a growing interest in the past few years due to their ability to simulate spectra recorded with ultrafast experimental techniques. The exact time evolution of a molecular system can, in principle, be obtained from the time-dependent version of full configuration interaction. Such an approach is, however, limited to few-atom systems due to the exponential increase of its cost with the system dimension. In the present work, we overcome this unfavorable scaling by employing the time-dependent density matrix renormalization group (TD-DMRG) which parametrizes the time-dependent wave function as a matrix product state. The time-dependent Schrödinger equation is then integrated with a sweep-based algorithm, as in standard time-independent DMRG. Unlike other TD-DMRG approaches, the one presented here leads to a set of coupled equations that can be integrated exactly. The resulting theory enables us to study real- and imaginary-time evolutions of Hamiltonians comprising more than 20 degrees of freedom that are challenging for current state-of-the-art quantum dynamics algorithms. We apply our algorithm to the simulation of quantum dynamics of models of increasing complexity, ranging from simple excitonic Hamiltonians to more complex ab initio vibronic ones.
Electronic and/or vibronic coherence has been found by recent ultrafast spectroscopy experiments in many chemical, biological, and material systems. This indicates that there are strong and complicated interactions between electronic states and vibration modes in realistic chemical systems. Therefore, simulations of quantum dynamics with a large number of electronic and vibrational degrees of freedom are highly desirable. Due to the efficient compression and localized representation of quantum states in the matrix-product state (MPS) formulation, time-evolution methods based on the MPS framework, which we summarily refer to as tDMRG (time-dependent density-matrix renormalization group) methods, are considered to be promising candidates to study the quantum dynamics of realistic chemical systems. In this work, we benchmark the performances of four different tDMRG methods, including global Taylor, global Krylov, and local one-site and two-site time-dependent variational principles (1TDVP and 2TDVP), with a comparison to multiconfiguration time-dependent Hartree and experimental results. Two typical chemical systems of internal conversion and singlet fission are investigated: one containing strong and high-order local and nonlocal electron-vibration couplings and the other exhibiting a continuous phonon bath. The comparison shows that the tDMRG methods (particularly, the 2TDVP method) can describe the full quantum dynamics in large chemical systems accurately and efficiently. Several key parameters in the tDMRG calculation including the truncation error threshold, time interval, and ordering of local sites were also investigated to strike the balance between efficiency and accuracy of results.