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arXiv:2505.00494 · Physical review. B./Physical review. B

Accelerating two-dimensional tensor network contractions using QR decompositions

Yining Zhang, Qi Yang, Philippe Corboz

Published Apr 3, 2026• 2 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

Infinite projected entangled-pair states (iPEPS) provide a powerful tool for studying strongly correlated systems directly in the thermodynamic limit. A core component of the algorithm is the approximate contraction of the iPEPS, where the computational bottleneck typically lies in the singular value or eigenvalue decompositions involved in the renormalization step. This is particularly true on GPUs, where tensor contractions are substantially faster than these decompositions. Here we propose a contraction scheme for $C_{4v}$-symmetric tensor networks based on combining the corner transfer matrix renormalization group (CTMRG) with QR-decompositions which are substantially faster, especially on GPUs. Our approach achieves up to two orders of magnitude speedup compared to standard CTMRG without loss of accuracy and yields state-of-the-art results for the Heisenberg and $J_1$-$J_2$ models in less than 1 h on an H100 GPU.

DOI
10.1103/ptls-kr9z

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Infinite projected entangled-pair states (iPEPS) provide a powerful tool for studying strongly correlated systems directly in the thermodynamic limit. A core component of the algorithm is the approximate contraction of the iPEPS, where the computational bottleneck typically lies in the singular value or eigenvalue decompositions involved in the renormalization step. This is particularly true on GPUs, where tensor contractions are substantially faster than these decompositions. Here we propose a contraction scheme for C4vC_{4v}C4v​-symmetric tensor networks based on combining the corner transfer matrix renormalization group (CTMRG) with QR-decompositions which are substantially faster, especially on GPUs. Our approach achieves up to two orders of magnitude speedup compared to standard CTMRG without loss of accuracy and yields state-of-the-art results for the Heisenberg and J1J_1J1​-J2J_2J2​ models in less than 1 h on an H100 GPU.
The corner transfer matrix renormalization group (CTMRG) is one of the standard contraction methods for infinite projected entangled-pair states (iPEPS), but its computational cost is dominated by repeated truncated singular value decompositions (SVDs). We introduce subspace-iteration CTMRG (SI-CTMRG), a QR-based projector construction that replaces each large-matrix SVD with an SVD of a much smaller matrix. The resulting algorithm shifts the dominant cost from decompositions to tensor contractions, making it highly suited to GPU acceleration and yielding speedups of up to two orders of magnitude over standard CTMRG. We demonstrate the efficiency and accuracy of the method for the triangular-lattice Heisenberg antiferromagnet, reaching state-of-the-art iPEPS results on a single H100 GPU in approximately 10 hours of computation.
We develop a QR-based corner transfer matrix renormalization group (CTMRG) framework for contracting infinite projected entangled-pair states (iPEPS) on honeycomb lattices. Our method explicitly uses the lattice's native C3v symmetry at each site, generalizing QR-based acceleration (previously limited to square lattices) to enable efficient and stable contractions. This approach achieves order-of-magnitude speedups over conventional singular value decomposition (SVD)-based CTMRG while maintaining high numerical precision. Comprehensive benchmark calculations for the spin-1/2 Heisenberg and Kitaev models demonstrate higher computational efficiency without sacrificing accuracy. We further employ our method to study the Kitaev-Heisenberg model, where we provide numerical evidence for the universal 1/r^4 decay of the dimer-dimer correlation function within the quantum spin liquid (QSL) phase. Our work establishes a framework for extending QR-based CTMRG to other lattice geometries, opening new avenues for studying exotic quantum phases with tensor networks.
Projected entangled-pair states (PEPS) have become a powerful tool for studying quantum many-body systems in the condensed matter and quantum materials context, particularly with advances in variational energy optimization methods. A key challenge within this framework is the computational cost associated with the contraction of the two-dimensional lattice, crucial for calculating state vector norms and expectation values. The conventional approach, using the corner transfer matrix renormalization group (CTMRG), involves combining two tensor network layers, resulting in significant time and memory demands. In this work, we introduce an alternative split-CTMRG algorithm, which maintains separate PEPS layers and leverages modified environment tensors, reducing computational complexity while preserving accuracy. Benchmarks on quantum lattice models demonstrate substantial speedups for variational energy optimization, rendering this method valuable for large-scale PEPS simulations.
Tensor network algorithms have proven to be very powerful tools for studying one- and two-dimensional quantum many-body systems. However, their application to three-dimensional (3D) quantum systems has so far been limited, mostly because the efficient contraction of a 3D tensor network is very challenging. In this paper, we develop and benchmark two contraction approaches for infinite projected entangled-pair states (iPEPS) in 3D. The first approach is based on a contraction of a finite cluster of tensors including an effective environment to approximate the full 3D network. The second approach performs a full contraction of the network by first iteratively contracting layers of the network with a boundary iPEPS, followed by a contraction of the resulting quasi-2D network using the corner transfer matrix renormalization group. Benchmark data for the Heisenberg and Bose-Hubbard models on the cubic lattice show that the algorithms provide competitive results compared to other approaches, making iPEPS a promising tool to study challenging open problems in 3D.
An extension of the projected entangled-pair states (PEPS) algorithm to infinite systems, known as the iPEPS algorithm, was recently proposed to compute the ground state of quantum systems on an infinite two dimensional lattice. Here we investigate a modification of the iPEPS algorithm, where the environment is computed using the corner transfer matrix renormalization group (CTMRG) method, instead of using one-dimensional transfer matrix methods as in the original proposal. We describe a variant of the CTMRG that addresses different directions of the lattice independently, and use it combined with imaginary time evolution to compute the ground state of the two dimensional quantum Ising model. Near criticality, the modified iPEPS algorithm is seen to provide a better estimation of the order parameter and correlators.
We revisit the corner transfer matrix renormalization group (CTMRG) method of Nishino and Okunishi for contracting two-dimensional (2D) tensor networks and demonstrate that its performance can be substantially improved by determining the tensors using an eigenvalue solver as opposed to the power method used in CTMRG. We also generalize the variational uniform matrix product state (VUMPS) ansatz for diagonalizing 1D quantum Hamiltonians to the case of 2D transfer matrices and discuss similarities with the corner methods. These two new algorithms will be crucial to improving the performance of variational infinite projected entangled pair state (PEPS) methods.