In recent years, tensor network renormalization (TNR) has emerged as an efficient and accurate method for studying (1+1)D quantum systems or 2D classical systems using real-space renormalization group (RG) techniques. One notable application of TNR is its ability to extract central charge and conformal scaling dimensions for critical systems. In this paper, we present the implementation of the Loop-TNR algorithm, which allows for the computation of dynamical correlation functions. Our algorithm goes beyond traditional approaches by not only calculating correlations in the spatial direction, where the separation is an integer, but also in the temporal direction, where the time difference can contain decimal values. Our algorithm is designed to handle both imaginary-time and real-time correlations, utilizing a tensor network representation constructed from a path-integral formalism. Additionally, we highlight that the Loop-TNR algorithm can also be applied to investigate critical properties of non-Hermitian systems, an area that was previously inaccessible using density matrix renormalization group(DMRG) and matrix product state(MPS) based algorithms.
In recent years, tensor network renormalization (TNR) has emerged as an efficient and accurate method for studying (1+1)D quantum systems or 2D classical systems using real-space renormalization group (RG) techniques. One notable application of TNR is its ability to extract central charge and conformal scaling dimensions for critical systems. In this paper, we present the implementation of the Loop-TNR algorithm, which allows for the computation of dynamical correlation functions. Our algorithm goes beyond traditional approaches by not only calculating correlations in the spatial direction, where the separation is an integer, but also in the temporal direction, where the time difference can contain decimal values. Our algorithm is designed to handle both imaginary-time and real-time correlations, utilizing a tensor network representation constructed from a path-integral formalism. Additionally, we highlight that the Loop-TNR algorithm can also be applied to investigate critical properties of non-Hermitian systems, an area that was previously inaccessible using density matrix renormalization group(DMRG) and matrix product state(MPS) based algorithms.
Loop optimization for tensor network renormalization (loop-TNR) is a real-space renormalization group algorithm suitable for studying 1+1D critical systems. While the original proposal by Yang et al. focused on classical models, we extend this algorithm with new techniques to enable accurate and efficient extraction of conformal data from critical quantum models. Benchmark results are provided for a number of quantum models, including ones described by non-minimal or non-unitary conformal field theories, showcasing both the strengths and limitations of loop-TNR. We discuss the subtle issue of non-analytic finite size effect in quantum lattice models and its impact on loop-TNR, and propose the use of virtual-space transfer-matrix to circumvent it, using the XY model as a demonstration. We then generalize loop-TNR to fermionic systems by incorporating Grassmann numbers, and benchmark the generalized algorithm on the t-V model. \n \nNext, we demonstrate a non-trivial application of loop-TNR by studying the 1D domain wall between untwisted and twisted 2D lattice gauge theories of finite groups G. We numerically study such domain walls for G = Z_N (with N<6) using loop-TNR, and discover a large class of gapless models. We also study the physical mechanism for these gapless domain walls and propose quantum field theory descriptions that agree perfectly with our numerical results. By taking advantage of the classification and construction of twisted gauge models using group cohomology theory, we systematically construct general lattice models to realize gapless domain walls for arbitrary finite symmetry group G. Such constructions can be generalized into arbitrary dimensions and might provide us a systematical way to study gapless domain walls and topological quantum phase transitions.
Tensor networks are a class of methods for studying many-body systems. They give a geometrical description of the internal structure of many-body states, operators, and partition functions, that can be used to implement efficient algorithms to simulate them numerically. In this thesis, after providing a very brief overview of the field, we present new tensor network methods for three different use cases. \n \nFirst, we present a new real-space renormalization group algorithm for tensor networks. Compared to existing methods, its advantages are its low computational cost, simplicity of implementation, and applicability to any network. We benchmark it on the 2D classical Ising model and find accuracy comparable with the best existing tensor network methods. Due to its simplicity and generalizability, we consider our algorithm to be an excellent candidate for implementation of real-space renormalization in higher dimensions, and discuss some of the details and the remaining challenges in 3D. \n \nSecond, we show how certain topological conformal defects of critical lattice theories can be represented as tensor networks, using the 2D classical Ising model as an example. Furthermore, we show how such tensor network descriptions, combined with a renormalization group algorithm, can be used to obtain accurate estimates of the universal properties of these defects. We also show how coarse-graining of defects can be applied to any conformal defect (i.e. not just topological ones), and yields a set of associated scaling dimensions. \n \nFinally, we leave behind the focus on renormalization group methods, and present a method for spatially resolving the overlap between two tensor network states, to obtain localized information about the similarities and differences between them. For a given region, the similarity of two states in this region can be quantified by the Uhlmann fidelity of their reduced density matrices, and we show how such fidelities can be efficiently computed in many cases when the two states are represented as tensor networks. We demonstrate the usefulness of evaluating such subsystem fidelities with three example applications: studying local quenches, comparing critical and non-critical states, and quantifying convergence in tensor network simulations.
On the lattice, a renormalization group (RG) flow for two-dimensional partition functions expressed as a tensor network can be obtained using the tensor network renormalization (TNR) algorithm [G. Evenbly, G. Vidal, Phys. Rev. Lett. 115 (18), 180405 (2015)]. In this work we explain how to extend TNR to field theories in the continuum. First, a short-distance length scale 1/Λ is introduced in the continuum partition function by smearing the fields. The resulting object is still defined in the continuum but has no fluctuations at distances shorter than 1/Λ. An infinitesimal coarse-graining step is then generated by the combined action of a rescaling operator L and a disentangling operator K that implements a quasi-local field redefinition. As demonstrated for a free boson in two dimensions, continuous TNR exactly preserves translation and rotation symmetries and can generate a proper RG flow. Moreover, from a critical fixed point of this RG flow one can then extract the conformal data of the underlying conformal field theory.
We present TNRKit, an open-source Julia package for Tensor Network Renormalization (TNR) of two- and three-dimensional classical statistical models and Euclidean lattice field theories. Built on top of TensorKit, it provides a symmetry-aware framework for constructing tensor-network representations of partition functions and coarse-graining them using methods such as TRG, HOTRG, and LoopTNR. Beyond thermodynamic quantities, the package enables the extraction of universal conformal data -- including scaling dimensions and the central charge -- directly from fixed-point tensors. TNRKit is designed with both usability and extensibility in mind, offering a practical platform for applying, benchmarking, and developing modern tensor renormalization algorithms. This paper also serves as a self-contained introduction to the TNR framework.
The study of the ground states of local Hamiltonians in quantum many-body and quantum field theoretic systems is a source of many research problems of great complexity. Almost in its entirety, this thesis deals with constructions related to the field of tensor networks, which are efficient parametrizations of mathematical objects from quantum many-body theory (such as quantum states and operators) that exploit our knowledge of their entanglement structures in order to obtain improvements in our computational abilities. In the past decade, the new research program of continuous tensor networks has arisen with the goal of reproducing, in the setting of quantum field theory, the success that tensor network techniques have enjoyed on the lattice. First, we present a number of results from research performed on non-interacting examples of the continuous Multiscale Entanglement Renormalization Ansatz, or cMERA, a continuous tensor network that provides a variational wavefunctional for a quantum field theoretic ground state. Initially, we study the correlations and entanglement structure of cMERA states, providing evidence that such states can be interpreted as UV regularized versions of the physical states they approximate. After that, we study what modifications of the formalism are necessary in order to consider systems with gauge symmetry, or in the presence of boundaries and defects. We obtain prescriptions for the treatment of these cases which, we expect, may also hold in the interacting setting. We then abandon briefly the area of continuous tensor networks to present a piece of research within a different though related research program: that of the study of manifestations of universal emergent behaviour in critical lattice systems. In particular we bring attention to the existence of an approximate representation of the Virasoro algebra supported on the eigenvectors of the reduced density matrices of critical lattice systems. We call this the entanglement algebra, and study its accuracy in the particular case of the Ising model. Lastly, we present a proposal for a continuous version of the Tensor Network Renormalization (TNR) algorithm, which we dub continuous TNR, or cTNR. cTNR operates on UV regularized classical partition functions or quantum Euclidean path integrals, and generates a real-space renormalization group flow via continuous coarse-graining and rescaling operations. We show that a UV regularized version of the free boson path integral can be made a fixed point of such a renormalization flow, in a way that allows for recovery of the conformal data associated to the free boson conformal field theory.
We discuss in detail algorithms for implementing tensor network renormalization (TNR) for the study of classical statistical and quantum many-body systems. First, we recall established techniques for how the partition function of a 2D classical many-body system or the Euclidean path integral of a 1D quantum system can be represented as a network of tensors, before describing how TNR can be implemented to efficiently contract the network via a sequence of coarse-graining transformations. The efficacy of the TNR approach is then benchmarked for the 2D classical statistical and 1D quantum Ising models; in particular the ability of TNR to maintain a high level of accuracy over sustained coarse-graining transformations, even at a critical point, is demonstrated.