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arXiv:1808.09707

An exact solution of the partition function for mean-field quantum spin systems without the static approximation

Manaka Okuyama, Masayuki Ohzeki

Published Aug 29, 2018• 2 citations
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Abstract

Suzuki-Trotter decomposition is a well-known technique used to calculate the partition function of quantum spin systems, in which the imaginary-time dependence of the partition function occurs inevitably. Since it is very difficult to explicitly treat the imaginary-time dependence of the partition function, we usually neglect the imaginary-time dynamical effect, which is called the static approximation. Although the static approximation is the first approach, it is not even clear when the static approximation is justified for mean-field quantum spin systems, that is, mean-field quantum spin systems have not been solved exactly so far. In this study, we solve exactly the partition function for a particular class of mean-field quantum spin systems including randomness without the static approximation. The partition function can be regarded as a result of time evolution in the imaginary-time Schrödinger equation, and solving the exact solution of the partition function is equivalent to solving the optimal control problem in the imaginary-time Schrödinger equation. As the result, the solution of the optimal control problem coincides exactly with the static approximate solution of the partition function and, therefore, the static approximation is exact for the particular class of mean-field quantum spin systems including randomness in general. Furthermore, we prove that the analysis of the previous study in quantum annealing is exact where the non-stoquastic interaction and the inhomogeneous transverse field accelerate the computational time exponentially for mean-field quantum spin systems.

DOI
10.48550/arxiv.1808.09707

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Suzuki-Trotter decomposition is a well-known technique used to calculate the partition function of quantum spin systems, in which the imaginary-time dependence of the partition function occurs inevitably. Since it is very difficult to explicitly treat the imaginary-time dependence of the partition function, we usually neglect the imaginary-time dynamical effect, which is called the static approximation. Although the static approximation is the first approach, it is not even clear when the static approximation is justified for mean-field quantum spin systems, that is, mean-field quantum spin systems have not been solved exactly so far. In this study, we solve exactly the partition function for a particular class of mean-field quantum spin systems including randomness without the static approximation. The partition function can be regarded as a result of time evolution in the imaginary-time Schrödinger equation, and solving the exact solution of the partition function is equivalent to solving the optimal control problem in the imaginary-time Schrödinger equation. As the result, the solution of the optimal control problem coincides exactly with the static approximate solution of the partition function and, therefore, the static approximation is exact for the particular class of mean-field quantum spin systems including randomness in general. Furthermore, we prove that the analysis of the previous study in quantum annealing is exact where the non-stoquastic interaction and the inhomogeneous transverse field accelerate the computational time exponentially for mean-field quantum spin systems.
We analyze the quantum Hopfield model in which an extensive number of patterns are embedded in the presence of a uniform transverse field. This analysis employs the replica method under the replica symmetric ansatz on the Suzuki-Trotter representation of the model, while keeping the number of Trotter slices MMM finite. The statistical properties of the quantum Hopfield model in imaginary time are reduced to an effective MMM-spin long-range classical Ising model, which can be extensively studied using a dedicated Monte Carlo algorithm. This approach contrasts with the commonly applied static approximation, which ignores the imaginary time dependency of the order parameters, but allows M→∞M \to \inftyM→∞ to be taken analytically. During the analysis, we introduce an exact but fundamentally weaker static relation, referred to as the quasi-static relation. We present the phase diagram of the model with respect to the transverse field strength and the number of embedded patterns, indicating a small but quantitative difference from previous results obtained using the static approximation.
In current studies of mean-field quantum spin systems, much attention is placed on the calculation of the ground-state energy and the excitation gap, especially the latter, which plays an important role in quantum annealing. In pure systems, the finite gap can be obtained by various existing methods such as the Holstein-Primakoff transform, while the tunneling splitting at first-order phase transitions has also been studied in detail using instantons in many previous works. In disordered systems, however, it remains challenging to compute the gap of large-size systems with specific realization of disorder. Hitherto, only quantum Monte Carlo techniques are practical for such studies. Recently, Knysh [Nature Comm. 7, 12370 (2016)] proposed a method where the exponentially large dimensionality of such systems is condensed onto a random potential of much lower dimension, enabling efficient study of such systems. Here we propose a slightly different approach, building upon the method of static approximation of the partition function widely used for analyzing mean-field models. Quantum effects giving rise to the excitation gap and nonextensive corrections to the free energy are accounted for by incorporating dynamical paths into the path integral. The time-dependence of the trace of the time-ordered exponential of the effective Hamiltonian is calculated by solving a differential equation perturbatively, yielding a finite-size series expansion of the path integral. Formulae for the first excited-state energy are proposed to aid in computing the gap. We illustrate our approach using the infinite-range ferromagnetic Ising model and the Hopfield model, both in the presence of a transverse field.
This study investigates the quantum effects in transverse-field Ising spin glass models with rotationally invariant random interactions. The primary aim is to evaluate the validity of a quasistatic approach that captures the imaginary-time dependence of the order parameters beyond the conventional static approximation. Using the replica method combined with the Suzuki-Trotter decomposition, we established a stability condition for the replica symmetric solution, which is analogous to the de Almeida-Thouless criterion. Numerical analysis of the Sherrington-Kirkpatrick model estimates a value of the critical transverse field, Γ_{c}, which is consistent with previous Monte Carlo-based estimations. For the Hopfield model, it provides an estimate of Γ_{c}, which has not been previously evaluated. For the random orthogonal model, our analysis suggests that quantum effects alter the random first-order transition scenario in the low-temperature limit. This study supports a quasistatic treatment for analyzing quantum spin glasses and may offer useful insights into the analysis of quantum optimization algorithms.
The cavity method is a well-established technique for solving classical spin models on sparse random graphs (mean-field models with finite connectivity). Laumann et al. [Phys. Rev. B 78, 134424 (2008)] proposed recently an extension of this method to quantum spin-1/2 models in a transverse field, using a discretized Suzuki-Trotter imaginary-time formalism. Here we show how to take analytically the continuous imaginary-time limit. Our main technical contribution is an explicit procedure to generate the spin trajectories in a path-integral representation of the imaginary-time dynamics. As a side result we also show how this procedure can be used in simple heat bath Monte Carlo simulations of generic quantum spin models. The replica symmetric continuous-time quantum cavity method is formulated for a wide class of models and applied as a simple example on the Bethe lattice ferromagnet in a transverse field. The results of the methods are confronted with various approximation schemes in this particular case. On this system we performed quantum Monte Carlo simulations that confirm the exactness of the cavity method in the thermodynamic limit.
We study the problem of approximating the partition function of the transverse-field Ising model (TFIM), a widely studied quantum many-body model with important applications in quantum simulation and quantum annealing. Despite its fundamental importance, the algorithmic landscape for computing the TFIM partition function has remained poorly understood beyond restricted parameter regimes. We provide a precise characterization of the temperature regimes in which efficient approximation is possible, establishing a sharp computational phase transition. Let J denote the symmetric interaction matrix and Δ(J) = λ_{max}(J)-λ_{min}(J) denote its spectral width. We show that, for all inverse temperatures β ∈ [0,1/Δ(J)], there exists an efficient classical randomized algorithm that approximates the partition function tr(e^{-β H}) to within an arbitrarily small multiplicative factor. To obtain this result, we apply the standard Trotter decomposition to map the quantum model to a classical spin system, and then leverage new techniques in Markov chain analysis to derive an efficient algorithm that samples from and computes the partition function of the resulting distribution. This temperature threshold is tight: for β > 1/Δ(J), we show that there exists interaction matrix J for which approximating the partition function, even within an exponential factor, is NP-hard and thus is unlikely to admit an efficient classical or quantum algorithm.
An improved transfer matrix method is proposed for calculating the partition function of quantum spin systems, which is expressed by the M-th approximant of the Suzuki-Trotter transformation with Trotter number M. The point is to incorporate the symmetry property of the Trotter subsystem in calculation. The size of our transfer matrix is reduced very much. Thermodynamics is described by the maximum eigenvalue of the transfer matrix. Our method is applied to the XY model with spin 1/2. We consider the cases of pair and tri spin decompositions with Trotter number up to 4 (M≤4). We can do our calculation analytically in those cases. In the pair spin decomposition we find results which have been obtained by the Monte Carlo simulation and by a transfer matrix method by computer. We find nice results in the tri spin decomposition. Our result in the case M=4 is as good as the result in M=8 by the previous Monte Carlo simulation on comparing them with the exact result of Katsura.