We introduce a method for the search of parent Hamiltonians of input wave functions based on the structure of their reduced density matrix. The two key elements of our recipe are an ansatz on the relation between the reduced density matrix and parent Hamiltonian that is exact at the field theory level, and a minimization procedure on the space of relative entropies, which is particularly convenient due to its convexity. As examples, we show how our method correctly reconstructs the parent Hamiltonian correspondent to several nontrivial ground state wave functions, including conformal and symmetry-protected-topological phases, and quantum critical points of two-dimensional antiferromagnets described by strongly coupled field theories. Our results show the entanglement structure of ground state wave functions considerably simplifies the search for parent Hamiltonians.
We introduce a method for the search of parent Hamiltonians of input wave functions based on the structure of their reduced density matrix. The two key elements of our recipe are an ansatz on the relation between the reduced density matrix and parent Hamiltonian that is exact at the field theory level, and a minimization procedure on the space of relative entropies, which is particularly convenient due to its convexity. As examples, we show how our method correctly reconstructs the parent Hamiltonian correspondent to several nontrivial ground state wave functions, including conformal and symmetry-protected-topological phases, and quantum critical points of two-dimensional antiferromagnets described by strongly coupled field theories. Our results show the entanglement structure of ground state wave functions considerably simplifies the search for parent Hamiltonians.
Variational wave functions have been a successful tool to investigate the properties of quantum spin liquids. Finding their parent Hamiltonians is of primary interest for the experimental realization of these strongly correlated phases, and for gathering additional insights on their stability. In this work, we systematically reconstruct approximate spin-chain parent Hamiltonians for Jastrow-Gutzwiller wave functions, which share several features with quantum spin liquid wave functions in two dimensions. Firstly, we determine the different phases encoded in the parameter space through their correlation functions and entanglement properties. Secondly, we apply a recently proposed entanglement-guided method to reconstruct parent Hamiltonians to these states, which constrains the search to operators describing relativistic low-energy field theories - as expected for deconfined phases of gauge theories relevant to quantum spin liquids. The quality of the results is discussed using different quantities and comparing to exactly known parent Hamiltonians at specific points in parameter space. Our findings provide guiding principles for experimental Hamiltonian engineering of this class of states.
Traditional computational methods for studying quantum many-body systems are "forward methods," which take quantum models, i.e., Hamiltonians, as input and produce ground states as output.However, such forward methods often limit one's perspective to a small fraction of the space of possible Hamiltonians.We introduce an alternative computational "inverse method," the eigenstate-to-Hamiltonian construction (EHC), that allows us to better understand the vast space of quantum models describing strongly correlated systems.EHC takes as input a wave function jψ T i and produces as output Hamiltonians for which jψ T i is an eigenstate.This is accomplished by computing the quantum covariance matrix, a quantum mechanical generalization of a classical covariance matrix.EHC is widely applicable to a number of models and, in this work, we consider seven different examples.Using the EHC method, we construct a parent Hamiltonian with a new type of antiferromagnetic ground state, a parent Hamiltonian with two different targeted degenerate ground states, and large classes of parent Hamiltonians with the same ground states as well-known quantum models, such as the Majumdar-Ghosh model, the XX chain, the Heisenberg chain, the Kitaev chain, and a 2D BdG model.EHC gives an alternative inverse approach for studying quantum many-body phenomena.
There are several known techniques to construct a Hamiltonian with an expected value that is minimized uniquely by a given quantum state. Common approaches include the parent Hamiltonian construction from matrix product states, building approximate ground state projectors, and, in a common case, developing penalty functions from the generalized Ising model. Here we consider the framework that enables one to engineer exact parent Hamiltonians from commuting polynomials. We derive elementary classification results of quadratic Ising parent Hamiltonians and to generally derive a non-injective parent Hamiltonian construction. We also consider that any n-qubit stabilizer state has a commutative parent Hamiltonian with n+1 terms and we develop an approach that allows the derivation of parent Hamiltonians by composition of network elements that embed the truth tables of discrete functions into a kernel space. This work presents a unifying framework that captures components of what is known about exact parent Hamiltonians and bridges a few techniques across the domains that are concerned with such constructions.
We consider a lattice version of the Bisognano-Wichmann (BW) modular Hamiltonian as an ansatz for the bipartite entanglement Hamiltonian of the quantum critical chains. Using numerically unbiased methods, we check the accuracy of the BW ansatz by both comparing the BW R\'enyi entropy to the exact results and investigating the size scaling of the norm distance between the exact reduced density matrix and the BW one. Our study encompasses a variety of models, scanning different universality classes, including integrable models such as the transverse field Ising, three-state Potts and XXZ chains, and the nonintegrable bilinear-biquadratic model. We show that the R\'enyi entropies obtained via the BW ansatz properly describe the scaling properties predicted by conformal field theory. Remarkably, the BW R\'enyi entropies also faithfully capture the corrections to the conformal field theory scaling associated with the energy density operator. In addition, we show that the norm distance between the discretized BW density matrix and the exact one asymptotically goes to zero with the system size: this indicates that the BW ansatz also can be employed to predict properties of the eigenvectors of the reduced density matrices and is thus potentially applicable to other entanglement-related quantities such as negativity.
We consider spaces of trial wave functions for ground states and edge excitations in the fractional quantum Hall effect that can be obtained in various ways. In one way, functions are obtained by analyzing the entanglement of the ground-state wave function, partitioned into two parts. In another, functions are defined by the way in which they vanish as several coordinates approach the same value, or by a projection-operator Hamiltonian that enforces those conditions. In a third way, functions are given by conformal blocks from a conformal field theory (CFT). These different spaces of functions are closely related. The use of CFT methods permits an algebraic formulation to be given for all of them. In some cases, we can prove that there is a ground state, a Hamiltonian, and a CFT such that, for any number of particles, all of these spaces are the same. For such cases, this resolves several questions and conjectures: it gives a finite-size bulk-edge correspondence, and we can use the analysis of functions to construct a projection-operator Hamiltonian that produces those functions as zero-energy states. For a model related to the N=1 superconformal algebra, the corresponding Hamiltonian imposes vanishing properties involving only three particles; for this we determine all the wave functions explicitly. We do the same for a sequence of models involving the M(3,p) Virasoro minimal models that has been considered previously, using results from the literature. We exhibit the Hamiltonians for the first few cases of these. The techniques we introduce can be applied in numerous examples other than those considered here.
Density matrix renormalization group (DMRG) or matrix product states (MPS) is the most effective and accurate method for studying one-dimensional quantum many-body systems. However, the application of DMRG to two-dimensional systems is not as successful because of the limited entanglement encoded in the wave-function ansatz. The fully augmented matrix product states (FAMPS), introduced recently in [Chin. Phys. Lett. 40, 057102 (2023)], extends MPS formalism to two dimensions and increases the entanglement in the wave-function ansatz, representing a significant advance in the simulation of two-dimensional quantum many-body physics. In the study of one-dimensional systems, the concept of a parent Hamiltonian for MPS has proven pivotal in the understanding of quantum entanglement. In this work, we extend this framework to two-dimensional systems. We illustrate the procedure to construct a two-dimensional Hamiltonian with given FAMPS as its exact ground state (the parent Hamiltonian for FAMPS). Additionally, through numerical simulations, we demonstrate the effectiveness of the algorithm outlined in [Chin. Phys. Lett. 40, 057102 (2023)] in precisely identifying the FAMPS for the constructed parent Hamiltonian. The introduction of FAMPS and its associated parent Hamiltonian provides a useful framework for the future investigations of two-dimensional quantum many-body systems.