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arXiv:2307.15738 · Physical review. B./Physical review. B

Dynamical variational Monte Carlo as a quantum impurity solver: Application to cluster dynamical mean field theory

Peter Rosenberg, David Sénéchal, A.–M. S. Tremblay, M. Charlebois

Published Dec 8, 2023• 4 citations
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Abstract

Two of the primary sources of error in the Cluster dynamical mean field theory (CDMFT) technique arise from the use of finite size clusters and finite size baths, which makes the development of impurity solvers that can treat larger systems an essential goal. In this work we introduce an impurity solver based on the recently developed dynamical variational Monte Carlo (dVMC) method. Variational Monte Carlo possesses a favorable scaling as a function of system size, which enables the treatment of systems beyond the reach of current exact diagonalization solvers. To benchmark the technique, we perform a systematic set of CDMFT calculations on the single-band one-dimensional Hubbard model. We compare to results obtained with an exact diagonalization solver for small clusters, and against the exact solution in the thermodynamic limit obtained by Lieb and Wu for larger clusters. The development of improved impurity solvers will help extend the reach of quantum cluster methods, which can be applied to a wide range of strongly correlated electron systems, promising new insights into their emergent behavior.

DOI
10.1103/physrevb.108.245122

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Two of the primary sources of error in the Cluster dynamical mean field theory (CDMFT) technique arise from the use of finite size clusters and finite size baths, which makes the development of impurity solvers that can treat larger systems an essential goal. In this work we introduce an impurity solver based on the recently developed dynamical variational Monte Carlo (dVMC) method. Variational Monte Carlo possesses a favorable scaling as a function of system size, which enables the treatment of systems beyond the reach of current exact diagonalization solvers. To benchmark the technique, we perform a systematic set of CDMFT calculations on the single-band one-dimensional Hubbard model. We compare to results obtained with an exact diagonalization solver for small clusters, and against the exact solution in the thermodynamic limit obtained by Lieb and Wu for larger clusters. The development of improved impurity solvers will help extend the reach of quantum cluster methods, which can be applied to a wide range of strongly correlated electron systems, promising new insights into their emergent behavior.
The solution of an auxiliary quantum impurity system is the computationally expensive step in dynamical mean field theory simulations of lattice models and materials. In this review, we discuss Monte Carlo based impurity solvers, which are suitable for a wide range of applications. In particular, we present an efficient implementation of the hybridization expansion approach, which enables the simulation of multiorbital impurity problems with off-diagonal and complex hybridizations, and dynamically screened (retarded) density-density interactions. As a complementary approach, we discuss an impurity solver based on the determinant Monte Carlo method, which scales favorably with inverse temperature and hence provides access to the very low temperature regime. The usefulness of these state-of-the-art impurity solvers is demonstrated with applications to the downfolding problem, i.e., the systematic derivation of dynamically screened interactions for low-energy effective models, and to pyrochlore iridates, where the spin-orbit coupling leads to complex hybridization functions in a multi-orbital system. As a benchmark for cluster extensions of dynamical mean field theory, we also present results from lattice Monte Carlo simulations for the momentum dependence of the pseudo-gap in the half-filled two-dimensional Hubbard model.
We investigate the cluster size convergence of the energy and observables using two forms of density matrix embedding theory (DMET): the original cluster form (CDMET) and a new formulation motivated by the dynamical cluster approximation (DCA-DMET). Both methods are applied to the half-filled one- and two-dimensional Hubbard models using a sign-problem free auxiliary-field quantum Monte Carlo impurity solver, which allows for the treatment of large impurity clusters of up to 100 sites. While CDMET is more accurate at smaller impurity cluster sizes, DCA-DMET exhibits faster asymptotic convergence towards the thermodynamic limit. We use our two formulations to produce new accurate estimates for the energy and local moment of the two-dimensional Hubbard model for U/t=2,4,6U/t=2,4,6U/t=2,4,6. These results compare favorably with the best data available in the literature, and help resolve earlier uncertainties in the moment for U/t=2U/t=2U/t=2.
We study the Hubbard model using the cellular dynamical mean-field theory (CDMFT) with quantum Monte Carlo (QMC) simulations. We present the algorithmic details of CDMFT with the Hirsch-Fye QMC method for the solution of the self-consistently embedded quantum cluster problem. We use the one- and two-dimensional half filled Hubbard model to gauge the performance of CDMFT+QMC\mathrm{CDMFT}+\mathrm{QMC}CDMFT+QMC particularly for small clusters by comparing with the exact results and also with other quantum cluster methods. We calculate single-particle Green's functions and self-energies on small clusters to study their size dependence in one and two dimensions. It is shown that in one dimension, CDMFT with two sites in the cluster is already able to describe with high accuracy the evolution of the density as a function of the chemical potential and the compressibility divergence at the Mott transition, in good agreement with the exact Bethe ansatz result. With increasing UUU the result on small clusters rapidly approaches that of the infinite size cluster. Large scattering rate and a positive slope in the real part of the self-energy in one dimension suggest that the system is a non-Fermi liquid for all the parameters studied here. In two dimensions, at intermediate to strong coupling, even the smallest cluster $({N}_{c}=2\ifmmode\times\else\texttimes\fi{}2)$ accounts for more than 95% of the correlation effect of the infinite-size cluster in the single particle spectrum, suggesting that some of the important problems in strongly correlated electron systems may be studied highly accurately with a reasonable computational effort. Finally, as an application that is sensitive to details of correlations, we show that CDMFT+QMC\mathrm{CDMFT}+\mathrm{QMC}CDMFT+QMC can describe spin-charge separated Luttinger liquid physics in one dimension. The spinon and holon branches appear only for sufficiently large system sizes.
Even after decades of intense research, the single band Hubbard model representing the fundamental model for interacting quantum systems and electronic correlations remains an unsolved cornerstone paradigm in theoretical solid state physics. Within the non-perturbative dynamical mean-field theory (DMFT), the lattice problem is mapped to a self-consistent auxiliary quantum impurity model leading to a local approximation of the self-energy. Nonlocal correlations can be included by the real-space cluster extension of the DMFT (CDMFT). Enlarging the unit cell makes the calculation of a numerically exact solution in CDMFT very challenging. We here use a quantum Monte-Carlo approach in the imaginary-time space in order to solve the self-consistency equations for different cluster sizes. In order to restore the broken translational symmetry re-periodization schemes for the Green function, the self-energy, or its cumulants have been introduced. However, these suffer from ambiguity and may even lead to convergence problems when attempted inside the self-consistency loop. The comparison to numerically exact diagrammatic quantum Monte Carlo calculations shows that introducing a so-called centerfocused extrapolation (CFE) to approximate the lattice self-energy yields very accurate results. Moreover, the CFE converges faster with the cluster size than previous periodization schemes. We here perform a detailed CDMFT analysis for the single-band Hubbard model on the 2D square lattice, reaching real-space cluster sizes of up to 9x9 sites. In addition to spectral properties, we also compute two-particle correlation functions which are not accessible in DMFT. Using benchmarks against diagrammatic Monte Carlo at high temperature, we show that the cluster spin susceptibility can be extrapolated to the exact result at large cluster size. In particular, the exponential decay of spin-spin correlations is very well captured by CDMFT calculations, even when correlations extend beyond the size of the cluster. We further present results at lower temperature T and larger UUU than the range currently accessible with diagrammatic Monte Carlo methods techniques. The CDMFT+CFE represents therefore a powerful computational tool to access the physics of non-local correlations beyond dynamical mean-field theory.
Dynamical mean-field theory (DMFT) is one of the most widely-used methods to treat accurately electron correlation effects in ab-initio real material calculations. Many modern large-scale implementations of DMFT in electronic structure codes involve solving a quantum impurity model with a continuous-time quantum Monte Carlo (CT-QMC) solver [Rubtsov et al., Phys. Rev. B 72, 035122 (2005); Werner et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 97, 076405 (2006); Werner and Millis, Phys. Rev. B 74, 155107 (2006); Gull et al., Rev. Mod. Phys. 83, 349 (2011)]. The main advantage of CT-QMC is that, unlike standard quantum Monte Carlo approaches, it is able to generate the local Green's functions $G(\ensuremath{\tau})$ of the correlated system on an arbitrarily fine imaginary time $\ensuremath{\tau}$ grid, and is free of any systematic errors. In this work, we extend a hybrid QMC solver proposed by Khatami et al. [Phys. Rev. E 81, 056703 (2010)] and Rost et al. [Phys. Rev. E 87, 053305 (2013)] to a multiorbital context. This has the advantage of enabling impurity solver QMC calculations to scale linearly with inverse temperature $\ensuremath{\beta}$, and permit its application to ddd- and fff-band materials. In addition, we present a Green's-function processing scheme which generates accurate quasicontinuous imaginary time solutions of the impurity problem which overcome errors inherent to standard QMC approaches. This solver and processing scheme are incorporated into a full DFT+DMFT calculation using the castep DFT code [Clark et al., Z. Kristallogr. 220, 567 (2005)]. Benchmark calculations for SrVO3{\mathrm{SrVO}}_{3}SrVO3​ properties are presented. The computational efficiency of this method is also demonstrated.
Accurate and reliable algorithms to solve complex impurity problems are instrumental to a routine use of quantum embedding methods for material discovery. In this context, we employ an efficient selected configuration-interaction impurity solver to investigate the role of bath discretization---specifically, bath size and parametrization---in Hamiltonian-based cluster dynamical mean-field theory (CDMFT) for the one- and two-orbital Hubbard models. We consider two- and four-site clusters for the single-orbital model and a two-site cluster for the two-orbital model. Our results demonstrate that, for small bath sizes, the choice of parametrization can significantly influence the solution, highlighting the importance of systematic convergence checks. Comparing different bath parametrizations not only reveals the robustness of a given solution but can also provide insights into the nature of different solutions and potential instabilities of the paramagnetic state. We present an extensive analysis of the zero-temperature Mott transition of the paramagnetic half-filled single-band Hubbard model, benchmarking our findings against previous literature. We find that, for the single-band model the dependence on parametrization is weak for the largest bath sizes accessible with ASCI, while a tendency towards a nematic solution can be seen when the bath size is small. Building on this, we extend our study to the multiband regime, where we present a systematic analysis at zero temperature for two orbitals and a two-site cluster. This setup allows us to assess the effect of nearest-neighbor dynamical correlations on the multi-orbital Mott transition. In this case, some quantitative dependence on the parametrization is retained for the two-orbital model, for instance in the value of the critical interaction for a Mott transition.