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arXiv:1902.02093 · Physical review. B./Physical review. B

Combined use of translational and spin-rotational invariance for spin systems

Tjark Heitmann, Jürgen Schnack

Published Apr 2, 2019• 24 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

Exact diagonalization and other numerical studies of quantum spin systems are notoriously limited by the exponential growth of the Hilbert space dimension with system size. A common and well-known practice to reduce this increasing computational effort is to take advantage of the translational symmetry ${C}_{N}$ in periodic systems. This represents a rather simple yet elegant application of the group theoretical symmetry projection operator technique. For isotropic exchange interactions, the spin-rotational symmetry $SU(2)$ can be used, where the Hamiltonian matrix is block structured according to the total spin and magnetization quantum numbers. Rewriting the Heisenberg Hamiltonian in terms of irreducible tensor operators allows for an efficient and highly parallelizable implementation to calculate its matrix elements recursively in the spin-coupling basis. When combining both ${C}_{N}$ and $SU(2)$, mathematically, the symmetry projection technique leads to ready-to-use formulas. However, the evaluation of these formulas is very demanding in both computation time and memory consumption, problems which are said to outweigh the benefits of the symmetry-reduced matrix shape. We show a way to minimize the computational effort for selected systems and present the largest numerically accessible cases.

DOI
10.1103/physrevb.99.134405

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Exact diagonalization and other numerical studies of quantum spin systems are notoriously limited by the exponential growth of the Hilbert space dimension with system size. A common and well-known practice to reduce this increasing computational effort is to take advantage of the translational symmetry CN{C}_{N}CN​ in periodic systems. This represents a rather simple yet elegant application of the group theoretical symmetry projection operator technique. For isotropic exchange interactions, the spin-rotational symmetry SU(2)SU(2)SU(2) can be used, where the Hamiltonian matrix is block structured according to the total spin and magnetization quantum numbers. Rewriting the Heisenberg Hamiltonian in terms of irreducible tensor operators allows for an efficient and highly parallelizable implementation to calculate its matrix elements recursively in the spin-coupling basis. When combining both CN{C}_{N}CN​ and SU(2)SU(2)SU(2), mathematically, the symmetry projection technique leads to ready-to-use formulas. However, the evaluation of these formulas is very demanding in both computation time and memory consumption, problems which are said to outweigh the benefits of the symmetry-reduced matrix shape. We show a way to minimize the computational effort for selected systems and present the largest numerically accessible cases.
While either a spin or point-group adaptation is straightforward when considered independently, the standard technique for factoring isotropic spin Hamiltonians by the total spin S and the irreducible representation Γ of the point group is limited by the complexity of the transformations between different coupling schemes that are related in terms of their site permutations. To overcome these challenges, we apply projection operators directly to uncoupled basis states, enabling the simultaneous treatment of spin and point-group symmetry without the need for recoupling transformations. This provides a simple and efficient approach for the exact diagonalization of isotropic spin models, which we illustrate, with applications in Heisenberg spin rings and polyhedra, including systems that are computationally inaccessible with conventional coupling techniques.
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For small-enough quantum systems numerical exact and complete diagonalization of the Hamiltonian enables one to evaluate and discuss all static, dynamic, and thermodynamic properties. In this article we consider Heisenberg spin systems and extend the range of applicability of the exact diagonalization method by showing how the irreducible tensor operator technique can be combined with an unrestricted use of general point-group symmetries. We also present ideas on how to use spin-rotational and point-group symmetries in order to obtain approximate spectra.
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We introduce a simple algorithm providing a compressed representation (∈ℝNorbits×Norbits×ℕNorbits) of an irreducible Hamiltonian matrix (number of magnons M constrained, dimension: Nspins!M!(Nspins−M)!>Norbits) of the spin-1/2 Heisenberg antiferromagnet on the L×L non-periodic lattice, not looking for a good basis. As L increases, the ratio of the matrix dimension to Norbits converges to 8 (order of the symmetry group of square) for the exact ground state computation. The sparsity of the Hamiltonian is retained in the compressed representation. Thus, the computational time and memory consumptions are reduced in proportion to the ratio.
The simulation and numerical study of large, strongly correlated quantum systems containing Fermions or using real-time evolution in finite dimensions is still an essentially unsolved problem, primarily due to the exponential growth of the Hilbert state space with system size and the occurrence of the so-called sign problem in Monte Carlo studies. In this area, the use of tensor-network methods, for one-dimensional systems chief among them the density matrix renormalisation group (DMRG) and matrix-product states (MPS), has grown in importance in recent years. This thesis first recapitulates the use of non-abelian symmetries such as SU(2)-Spin in arbitrary tensor networks with an extensive review of the published literature including detailed algorithms and implementation hints. Implementing such symmetries can lead to a considerably more efficient representation of states in the tensor network. This part is intended to be suitable as an implementation-oriented introduction to tensor networks in general and the implementation of non-abelian symmetries in particular. Second, it introduces a series of technical improvements for the MPS methods. These improvements include a faster convergence scheme for MPS-DMRG, a systematic approach to the construction of matrix-product operators and an improved Krylov time evolution method as well as the combination of several well-known techniques into a single tensor network toolkit, SYTEN. The effectiveness of these improvements is demonstrated in numerical examples. Third, the toolkit is applied to the study of two models of current research interest: A one-dimensional spin chain in a staggered external magnetic field is studied and confinement of the elementary spinon excitations, as predicted by analytical arguments, found numerically using real-time evolution and evaluation of the dynamical structure factor. Additionally, the Hubbard model in two dimensions is studied extensively at various system sizes, geometries, interaction strengths U and filling factors n using up to 30'000 SU(2)-Spin-symmetric states equivalent to approx. 100'000 states in other MPS-DMRG implementations. Hints of a possible phase coexistence in the region 0.85 < n < 0.95 are found at intermediate interaction strengths U = 4 and U = 6 as well as a consistently striped ground state in the region n ≈ 0.875.