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arXiv:2310.19761 · Journal of High Energy Physics

Real-time spin systems from lattice field theory

Neill C. Warrington

Published Dec 22, 2023• 1 citation
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Abstract

Abstract We construct a lattice field theory method for computing the real-time dynamics of spin systems in a thermal bath. This is done by building on previous work of Takano with Schwinger-Keldysh and functional differentiation techniques. We derive a Schwinger-Keldysh path integral for generic spin Hamiltonians, then demonstrate the method on a simple system. Our path integral has a sign problem, which generally requires exponential run time in the system size, but requires only linear storage. The latter may place this method at an advantage over exact diagonalization, which is exponential in both. Our path integral is amenable to contour deformations, a technique for reducing sign problems.

DOI
10.1007/jhep12(2023)156

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Abstract We construct a lattice field theory method for computing the real-time dynamics of spin systems in a thermal bath. This is done by building on previous work of Takano with Schwinger-Keldysh and functional differentiation techniques. We derive a Schwinger-Keldysh path integral for generic spin Hamiltonians, then demonstrate the method on a simple system. Our path integral has a sign problem, which generally requires exponential run time in the system size, but requires only linear storage. The latter may place this method at an advantage over exact diagonalization, which is exponential in both. Our path integral is amenable to contour deformations, a technique for reducing sign problems.
Monte Carlo studies involving real time dynamics are severely restricted by the sign problem that emerges from a highly oscillatory phase of the path integral. In this Letter, we present a new method to compute real time quantities on the lattice using the Schwinger-Keldysh formalism via Monte Carlo simulations. The key idea is to deform the path integration domain to a complex manifold where the phase oscillations are mild and the sign problem is manageable. We use the previously introduced "contraction algorithm" to create a Markov chain on this alternative manifold. We substantiate our approach by analyzing the quantum mechanical anharmonic oscillator. Our results are in agreement with the exact ones obtained by diagonalization of the Hamiltonian. The method we introduce is generic and, in principle, applicable to quantum field theory albeit very slow. We discuss some possible improvements that should speed up the algorithm.
Direct numerical evaluation of the real-time path integral has a well-known sign problem that makes convergence exponentially slow. One promising remedy is to use Picard-Lefschetz theory to flow the domain of the field variables into the complex plane, where the integral is better behaved. By Cauchy's theorem, the final value of the path integral is unchanged. Previous analyses have considered the case of real scalar fields in thermal equilibrium, employing a closed Schwinger-Keldysh time contour, allowing the evaluation of the full quantum correlation functions. Here we extend the analysis by not requiring a closed time path, instead allowing for an initial density matrix for out-of-equilibrium initial value problems. We are able to explicitly implement Gaussian initial conditions, and by separating the initial time and the later times into a two-step Monte-Carlo sampling, we are able to avoid the phenomenon of multiple thimbles. In fact, there exists one and only one thimble for each sample member of the initial density matrix. We demonstrate the approach through explicitly computing the real-time propagator for an interacting scalar in 0+1 dimensions, and find very good convergence allowing for comparison with perturbation theory and the classical-statistical approximation to real-time dynamics.
Abstract Direct numerical evaluation of the real-time path integral has a well-known sign problem that makes convergence exponentially slow. One promising remedy is to use Picard-Lefschetz theory to flow the domain of the field variables into the complex plane, where the integral is better behaved. By Cauchy’s theorem, the final value of the path integral is unchanged. Previous analyses have considered the case of real scalar fields in thermal equilibrium, employing a closed Schwinger-Keldysh time contour, allowing the evaluation of the full quantum correlation functions. Here we extend the analysis by not requiring a closed time path, instead allowing for an initial density matrix for out-of-equilibrium initial value problems. We are able to explicitly implement Gaussian initial conditions, and by separating the initial time and the later times into a two-step Monte-Carlo sampling, we are able to avoid the phenomenon of multiple thimbles. In fact, there exists one and only one thimble for each sample member of the initial density matrix. We demonstrate the approach through explicitly computing the real-time propagator for an interacting scalar in 0+1 dimensions, and find very good convergence allowing for comparison with perturbation theory and the classical-statistical approximation to real-time dynamics.
Abstract We develop a unified framework for open quantum systems composed of many mutually interacting quantum spins, or any isomorphic systems like qubits and qudits, surrounded by one or more independent bosonic baths. Our framework, based on Schwinger–Keldysh field theory (SKFT), can handle arbitrary spin value S , dimensionality of space, and geometry, while being applicable to a large parameter space for system and bath. It can probe regimes in which non-Markovian dynamics and nonperturbative effects pose formidable challenges for other state-of-the-art theoretical methods. This is achieved by working with the two-particle irreducible (2PI) effective action, which resums classes of Feynman diagrams of SKFT to an infinite order. Furthermore, such diagrams are generated via an expansion in 1 / N , where N is the number of Schwinger bosons we employ to map spin operators onto canonically commuting ones, rather than via conventional expansion in system-bath coupling constant. We carefully benchmark our SKFT+2PI-computed results vs. numerically (quasi)exact ones from tensor network calculations applied to the archetypical spin-boson model where both methodologies are applicable. Additionally, we demonstrate the capability of SKFT+2PI to handle a much more complex spin-chain-boson model with multiple baths interacting with each spin where no benchmark from other methods is available at present. The favorable numerical cost of solving integro-differential equations produced by the SKFT+2PI framework with an increasing number of spins and time steps makes it a promising route for simulating driven-dissipative systems in quantum computing, quantum magnonics, and quantum spintronics.
We discuss a scheme for simulating the real-time quantum quench dynamics of interacting quantum spin systems within the positive-P formalism. As model systems we study the transverse field Ising model as well as the Heisenberg model undergoing a quench away from the classical ferromagnetic ordered state and the antiferromagnetic Néel state, depending on the sign of the Heisenberg exchange interaction. The connection to the positive-P formalism as it is used in quantum optics is established by mapping the spin operators on to Schwinger bosons. In doing so, the dynamics of the interacting quantum spin system is mapped onto a set of Ito stochastic differential equations the number of which scales linearly with the number of spins, N , compared to an exact solution through diagonalization that, in the case of the Heisenberg model, would require matrices exponentially large in N . This mapping is exact and can be extended to higher dimensional interacting systems as well as to systems with an explicit coupling to the environment.