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arXiv:2304.05699 · Physical Review A

Simulating the Berezinskii-Kosterlitz-Thouless transition with the complex Langevin algorithm

Philipp Heinen, Thomas Gasenzer

Published Nov 13, 2023• 2 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

Numerical simulations of the full quantum properties of interacting many-body systems by means of field-theoretic Monte Carlo techniques are often limited due to a sign problem. Here we simulate properties of a dilute two-dimensional Bose gas in the vicinity of the Berezinskii-Kosterlitz-Thouless (BKT) transition by means of the complex Langevin (CL) algorithm, thereby extending our previous CL study of the three-dimensional Bose gas to the lower-dimensional case. The purpose of the paper is twofold. On the one hand, it adds to benchmarking of the CL method and thus contributes to further exploring the range of applicability of the method. With the respective results, the universality of the equation of state is recovered, as well as the long-wave-length power-law dependence of the single-particle momentum spectrum below the BKT transition. Analysis of the rotational part of the current density corroborates vortex unbinding in crossing the transition. Beyond these measures of consistency we compute quantum corrections to the critical density and chemical potential in the weakly coupled regime. Our results show a shift of these quantities to lower values as compared to those obtained from classical field theory. It points in the opposite direction as compared to the shift of the critical density found by means of the path-integral Monte Carlo method at larger values of the coupling. Our simulations widen the perspective for precision comparisons with experiment.

DOI
10.1103/physreva.108.053311

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The Philosophical Magazine A Journal of Theoretical Experimental and Applied Physics•Dec 7, 2022•0 citations
Numerical simulations of the full quantum properties of interacting many-body systems by means of field-theoretic Monte Carlo techniques are often limited due to a sign problem. Here we simulate properties of a dilute two-dimensional Bose gas in the vicinity of the Berezinskii-Kosterlitz-Thouless (BKT) transition by means of the complex Langevin (CL) algorithm, thereby extending our previous CL study of the three-dimensional Bose gas to the lower-dimensional case. The purpose of the paper is twofold. On the one hand, it adds to benchmarking of the CL method and thus contributes to further exploring the range of applicability of the method. With the respective results, the universality of the equation of state is recovered, as well as the long-wave-length power-law dependence of the single-particle momentum spectrum below the BKT transition. Analysis of the rotational part of the current density corroborates vortex unbinding in crossing the transition. Beyond these measures of consistency we compute quantum corrections to the critical density and chemical potential in the weakly coupled regime. Our results show a shift of these quantities to lower values as compared to those obtained from classical field theory. It points in the opposite direction as compared to the shift of the critical density found by means of the path-integral Monte Carlo method at larger values of the coupling. Our simulations widen the perspective for precision comparisons with experiment.
Quantitative numerical analyses of interacting dilute Bose-Einstein condensates are most often based on semiclassical approximations. Since the complex-valued field-theoretic action of the Bose gas does not offer itself to the direct application of standard Monte Carlo techniques, simulations beyond their scope by now almost exclusively rely on quantum-mechanical techniques. Here we explore an alternative approach based on a Langevin-type sampling in an extended state space, known as the complex Langevin (CL) algorithm. While the use of the CL technique has a long-standing history in high-energy physics, in particular in the simulation of QCD at finite baryon density, applications to ultracold atoms are still in their infancy. Here we examine the applicability of the CL approach for a one- and two-component, three-dimensional nonrelativistic Bose gas in thermal equilibrium, below and above the Bose-Einstein phase transition. By comparison with analytic descriptions at the Gaussian level, including Bogoliubov and Hartree-Fock theory, we find that the method allows computing reliably and efficiently observables in the regime of experimentally accessible parameters. Close to the transition, quantum corrections lead to a shift of the critical temperature which we reproduce within the numerical range known in the literature. With this work, we aim to provide a first test of CL as a potential out-of-the-box tool for the simulation of experimentally realistic situations, including trapping geometries and multicomponent (or multiple species) models.
Recent experiments on ultracold Bose gases in two dimensions have provided evidence for the existence of the Berezinskii-Kosterlitz-Thouless (BKT) phase via analysis of the interference between two independent systems. In this work we study the two-dimensional quantum degenerate Bose gas at finite temperature using the projected Gross-Pitaevskii equation classical field method. Although this describes the highly occupied modes of the gas below a momentum cutoff, we have developed a method to incorporate the higher momentum states in our model. We concentrate on finite-sized homogeneous systems in order to simplify the analysis of the vortex pairing. We determine the dependence of the condensate fraction on temperature and compare this to the calculated superfluid fraction. By measuring the first order correlation function we determine the boundary of the Bose-Einstein condensate and BKT phases, and find it is consistent with the superfluid fraction decreasing to zero. We reveal the characteristic unbinding of vortex pairs above the BKT transition via a coarse-graining procedure. Finally, we model the procedure used in experiments to infer system correlations [Hadzibabic et al., Nature 441, 1118 (2006)], and quantify its level of agreement with directly calculated in situ correlation functions.
We prepare and study strongly interacting two-dimensional Bose gases in the superfluid, the classical Berezinskii-Kosterlitz-Thouless (BKT) transition, and the vacuum-to-superfluid quantum critical regimes. A wide range of the two-body interaction strength 0.05 < g < 3 is covered by tuning the scattering length and by loading the sample into an optical lattice. Based on the equations of state measurements, we extract the coupling constants as well as critical thermodynamic quantities in different regimes. In the superfluid and the BKT transition regimes, the extracted coupling constants show significant down-shifts from the mean-field and perturbation calculations when g approaches or exceeds one. In the BKT and the quantum critical regimes, all measured thermodynamic quantities show logarithmic dependence on the interaction strength, a tendency confirmed by the extended classical-field and renormalization calculations.
We study the universal critical behavior of two-dimensional (2D) lattice bosonic gases at the Berezinskii-Kosterlitz-Thouless (BKT) transition, which separates the low-temperature superfluid phase from the high-temperature normal phase. For this purpose, we perform quantum Monte Carlo simulations of the hard-core Bose-Hubbard (BH) model at zero chemical potential. We determine the critical temperature by using a matching method that relates finite-size data for the BH model with corresponding data computed in the classical XYXYXY model. In this approach, the neglected scaling corrections decay as inverse powers of the lattice size LLL, and not as powers of 1/lnL1/\mathrm{ln}L1/lnL, as in more standard approaches, making the estimate of the critical temperature much more reliable. Then, we consider the BH model in the presence of a trapping harmonic potential, and we verify the universality of the trap-size dependence at the BKT critical point. This issue is relevant for experiments with quasi-2D trapped cold atoms.
We test an improved finite-size scaling method for reliably extracting the critical temperature T BKT of a Berezinskii–Kosterlitz–Thouless (BKT) transition. Using known single-parameter logarithmic corrections to the spin stiffness ρ s at T BKT in combination with the Kosterlitz–Nelson relation between the transition temperature and the stiffness, ρ s ( T BKT ) = 2 T BKT /π, we define a size-dependent transition temperature T BKT ( L 1 , L 2 ) based on a pair of system sizes L 1 , L 2 , e.g., L 2 = 2 L 1 . We use Monte Carlo data for the standard two-dimensional classical XY model to demonstrate that this quantity is well behaved and can be reliably extrapolated to the thermodynamic limit using the next expected logarithmic correction beyond the ones included in defining T BKT ( L 1 , L 2 ). For the Monte Carlo calculations we use GPU (graphical processing unit) computing to obtain high-precision data for L up to 512. We find that the sub-leading logarithmic corrections have significant effects on the extrapolation. Our result T BKT = 0.8935(1) is several error bars above the previously best estimates of the transition temperature, T BKT ≈ 0.8929. If only the leading log-correction is used, the result is, however, consistent with the lower value, suggesting that previous works have underestimated T BKT because of the neglect of sub-leading logarithms. Our method is easy to implement in practice and should be applicable to generic BKT transitions.
We explore the consequences of including quantum corrections in an interacting 2D Bose system near Berezinskii–Kosterlitz–Thouless (BKT) transition. To go beyond mean-field theory and treat correlations, we use Matsubara Green's function method, and, following a previous novel approach, study features of the interacting Green's function just above the transition. We numerically obtain self-consistent solutions of boson self-energy to second order as well as higher order (re-summation of ladder and bubble diagrams) in the interaction strength, for the entire range of momentum, k, and compare our findings with analytic results in the limits of low- and high-k. Thereby, in the weak interaction limit, we retrieve the universal transition condition and calculate the universal scaling parameter (independent of interaction strength). The renormalised single-particle Green's function is found to decay algebraically at large distance r.