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arXiv:2402.15377 · Physical Review C

Worldline Monte Carlo method for few-body nuclear physics

Shailesh Chandrasekharan A, Son T. Nguyen, Thomas R. Richardson

Published Aug 14, 2024• 4 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

In this work we introduce a worldline-based fermion Monte Carlo algorithm for studying few body quantum mechanics of self-interacting fermions in the Hamiltonian lattice formulation. Our motivation to construct the method comes from our interest in studying renormalization of chiral nuclear effective-field theory with lattice regularization. In particular we wish to apply our method to compute the lattice spacing dependence of local lattice interactions as we take the continuum limit of the lattice theory. Our algorithm can compute matrix elements of the operator $exp(\ensuremath{-}\ensuremath{\beta}H)$, where $H$ is the lattice Hamiltonian and $\ensuremath{\beta}$ is a free real parameter. These elements help us compute deep bound states that are well separated from scattering states even at values of $\ensuremath{\beta}$ which are not very large. Computing these bound-state energies accurately can help us study renormalization of the lattice theory. In addition to developing the algorithm, in this work we also introduce a finite-volume renormalization scheme for the lattice Hamiltonian of the leading pionless effective-field theory and show how it would work in the one- and two-body sectors.

DOI
10.1103/physrevc.110.024002

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In this work we introduce a worldline-based fermion Monte Carlo algorithm for studying few body quantum mechanics of self-interacting fermions in the Hamiltonian lattice formulation. Our motivation to construct the method comes from our interest in studying renormalization of chiral nuclear effective-field theory with lattice regularization. In particular we wish to apply our method to compute the lattice spacing dependence of local lattice interactions as we take the continuum limit of the lattice theory. Our algorithm can compute matrix elements of the operator exp(\ensuremath−\ensuremathβH)exp(\ensuremath{-}\ensuremath{\beta}H)exp(\ensuremath−\ensuremathβH), where HHH is the lattice Hamiltonian and \ensuremathβ\ensuremath{\beta}\ensuremathβ is a free real parameter. These elements help us compute deep bound states that are well separated from scattering states even at values of \ensuremathβ\ensuremath{\beta}\ensuremathβ which are not very large. Computing these bound-state energies accurately can help us study renormalization of the lattice theory. In addition to developing the algorithm, in this work we also introduce a finite-volume renormalization scheme for the lattice Hamiltonian of the leading pionless effective-field theory and show how it would work in the one- and two-body sectors.
Quantum Monte Carlo methods have been used very successfully to calculate the ground state properties of a variety of nuclear and other strongly interacting many body systems. An exciting recent development in low energy nuclear physics is the formulation of nuclear Hamiltonians based on the symmetries of quantum chromodynamics via chiral effective field theory. However, the usual coordinate space based quantum Monte Carlo implementation is unsuitable for these Hamiltonians due to the presence of non-localites. Here we report on our recent work in developing a new quantum Monte Carlo algorithm suitable for these non-local Hamiltonians, and present some results for pure neutron matter.
In the first part of the thesis we consider the constraints of causality and unitarity for particles interacting via strictly finite-range interactions. We generalize Wigner's causality bound to the case of non-vanishing partial-wave mixing. Specifically we analyze the system of the low-energy interactions between protons and neutrons. We also analyze low-energy scattering for systems with arbitrary short-range interactions plus an attractive 1/rα1/r^α1/rα tail for α≥2α\geq2α≥2. In particular, we focus on the case of α=6α=6α=6 and we derive the constraints of causality and unitarity also for these systems and find that the van der Waals length scale dominates over parameters characterizing the short-distance physics of the interaction. This separation of scales suggests a separate universality class for physics characterizing interactions with an attractive 1/r61/r^{6}1/r6 tail. We argue that a similar universality class exists for any attractive potential 1/rα1/r^α1/rα for α≥2α\geq2α≥2. In the second part of the thesis we present lattice Monte Carlo calculations of fermion-dimer scattering in the limit of zero-range interactions using the adiabatic projection method. The adiabatic projection method uses a set of initial cluster states and Euclidean time projection to give a systematically improvable description of the low-lying scattering cluster states in a finite volume. We use Lüscher's finite-volume relations to determine the sss-wave, ppp-wave, and ddd-wave phase shifts. For comparison, we also compute exact lattice results using Lanczos iteration and continuum results using the Skorniakov-Ter-Martirosian equation. For our Monte Carlo calculations we use a new lattice algorithm called impurity lattice Monte Carlo. This algorithm can be viewed as a hybrid technique which incorporates elements of both worldline and auxiliary-field Monte Carlo simulations.
We study the physics of two species of non-relativistic hard-core bosons with attractive or repulsive delta function interactions on a spacetime lattice using the worldline formulation. By tuning the chemical potential carefully we show that worm algorithms can efficiently sample the worldline configurations in any fixed particle-number sector. Since fermions can be treated as hard-core bosons up to a permutation sign, we also apply this approach to non-relativistic fermions. The fermion permutation sign is treated as an observable in this approach and can be used to extract energies for each particle-number sector. Since in one dimension non-relativistic fermions can only permute due to boundary effects, unlike the auxiliary field method, in many cases our approach does not suffer from sign problems. Using our method we discover limitations of the recently proposed complex Langevin calculations in one dimension.
Nuclear many-body systems, ranging from nuclei to neutron stars, are some of the most interesting physical phenomena in our universe, and quantum Monte Carlo (QMC) approaches are among the most accurate many-body methods currently available to study them. In recent decades, interactions derived from chiral effective field theory (EFT) have been widely adopted in the study of nuclear many-body systems. One drawback of the QMC approach is the requirement that the nuclear interactions need to be local, whereas chiral EFT interactions usually contain nonlocalities. In this work, we leverage the capability of computing second-order perturbative corrections to the ground-state energy in order to develop a self-consistent approach to including nonlocal operators in QMC calculations. We investigate both the deuteron and the neutron-matter equation of state in order to show the robustness of our technique and pave the way for future QMC calculations at higher orders in the EFT, where nonlocal operators cannot be avoided.
We examine three different quantum Monte Carlo methods for studying systems of interacting particles. The determinantal quantum Monte Carlo method is compared to two different worldline simulations. The first worldline method consists of a simulation carried out in the real-space basis, while the second method is implemented using as basis the eigenstates of the Hamiltonian on blocks of the two-dimensional lattice. We look, in particular, at the Hubbard model on a 4\ifmmode\times\else\texttimes\fi{}4 lattice with periodic boundary conditions. The block method is superior to the real-space method in terms of the computational cost of the simulation, but shows a much worse negative sign problem. For larger values of U and away from half-filling it is found that the real-space method can provide results at lower temperatures than the determinantal method. We show that the sign problem in the block method can be slightly improved by an appropriate choice of basis.
We formulate the physics of two species of nonrelativistic hard-core bosons with attractive or repulsive delta function interactions on a spacetime lattice in the worldline approach. We show that worm algorithms can efficiently sample the worldline configurations in any fixed particle-number sector if the chemical potential is tuned carefully. Since fermions can be treated as hard-core bosons up to a permutation sign, we apply this approach to study nonrelativistic fermions. The fermion permutation sign is an observable in this approach and can be used to extract energies in each particle-number sector. In one dimension, nonrelativistic fermions can only permute across boundaries, and so our approach does not suffer from sign problems in many cases, unlike the auxiliary field method. Using our approach, we discover limitations of the recently proposed complex Langevin calculations in one spatial dimension for some parameter regimes. In higher dimensions, our method suffers from the usual fermion sign problem. Here we provide evidence that it may be possible to alleviate this problem for few-body physics.