Accurately describing many-body effects in multi-orbital systems remains a major challenge in theoretical condensed matter physics. At present, there is a significant methodological gap between the numerical tools used in ab initio computational materials science and those developed to study strong electronic correlations. The former can treat realistic, large-scale systems but typically neglect many-body effects, while the latter focus on simplified models with only a few degrees of freedom, as only such models can be solved accurately in the presence of strong interactions. The purpose of this thesis is to bridge these two approaches and establish a systematic theoretical framework for realistic correlated electronic materials. This involves a full-cycle methodology that begins with constructing ab initio interacting models from density-functional theory, solving them using dynamical mean-field theory to capture local correlations, and extending beyond to incorporate non-local collective electronic fluctuations. To this end, we introduce the "dual" approach to strong correlations, which includes the dual fermion, dual boson, and dual triply irreducible local expansion methods. The central idea of the dual theories is to shift the reference point of the conventional Feynman diagrammatic expansion from a non-interacting electronic system to an interacting but exactly solvable one. Integrating out this reference system recasts the expansion in an effective dual space, where all diagrammatic building blocks are renormalized by the corresponding impurity quantities. This procedure transforms a non-perturbative expansion in the original variables into a perturbative expansion in terms of dual fermionic and bosonic fields, exact in both the weak- and strong-coupling limits. In this thesis, we collect and systematize the major developments of dual techniques achieved to date.
Accurately describing many-body effects in multi-orbital systems remains a major challenge in theoretical condensed matter physics. At present, there is a significant methodological gap between the numerical tools used in ab initio computational materials science and those developed to study strong electronic correlations. The former can treat realistic, large-scale systems but typically neglect many-body effects, while the latter focus on simplified models with only a few degrees of freedom, as only such models can be solved accurately in the presence of strong interactions. The purpose of this thesis is to bridge these two approaches and establish a systematic theoretical framework for realistic correlated electronic materials. This involves a full-cycle methodology that begins with constructing ab initio interacting models from density-functional theory, solving them using dynamical mean-field theory to capture local correlations, and extending beyond to incorporate non-local collective electronic fluctuations. To this end, we introduce the "dual" approach to strong correlations, which includes the dual fermion, dual boson, and dual triply irreducible local expansion methods. The central idea of the dual theories is to shift the reference point of the conventional Feynman diagrammatic expansion from a non-interacting electronic system to an interacting but exactly solvable one. Integrating out this reference system recasts the expansion in an effective dual space, where all diagrammatic building blocks are renormalized by the corresponding impurity quantities. This procedure transforms a non-perturbative expansion in the original variables into a perturbative expansion in terms of dual fermionic and bosonic fields, exact in both the weak- and strong-coupling limits. In this thesis, we collect and systematize the major developments of dual techniques achieved to date.
The main focus of the present thesis lies on the development and application of numerical approaches based on quantum lattice models to describe collective excitations in strongly correlated materials. To this end, an efficient and balanced dual triply irreducible local expansion (D-TRILEX) approach that captures the major effects of spatial correlations in strongly correlated fermionic systems is presented, which is based on partial bosonization of the collective electronic fluctuations. Thereby, a specific choice of the bare interaction in the corresponding channel of instability allows a simultaneous description of collective excitations in different channels without facing the Fierz ambiguity problem which usually arises in methods based on partial bosonization. Compared to more elaborate methods, D-TRILEX does not require the computation of the numerically expensive four-point vertex. Furthermore, taking into account only the leading longitudinal contribution of the bosonic modes to the self-energy reduces the complexity of the diagrammatic structure drastically making the method applicable to more complex realistic multi-orbital systems. As the main result of this thesis, the D-TRILEX approach is introduced and its limit of applicability is studied by applying it to the two-dimensional single-band Hubbard model. Performing a comprehensive diagrammatic analysis by comparing D-TRILEX with methods, which consider different sets of diagrams and different approximations for the four-point vertex, we find that contributions that are not considered by the partially bosonized approximation of the four-point vertex have only a minor effect on electronic degrees of freedom and the longitudinal bosonic modes taking into account in D-TRILEX self-energy are the leading ones in a broad range of control parameters. After investigating the applicability of the D-TRILEX approach we apply the method to study collective electronic effects in the hole-doped InSe monolayers using a realistic electronic-structure model. Thereby, we find that due to the weakly screened long-range Coulomb interaction the system shows a charge density waves phase for the broad range of considered parameters, however, inside this regime we have found a coexisting ferromagnetic phase. D-TRILEX can be considered as an approximation of the more elaborate dual boson (DB) theory, which accounts for local correlations within the dynamical mean-field theory (DMFT) and nonlocal correlations perturbatively. As a further result of this thesis, we investigate the weak coupling regime of the two-dimensional single-band Hubbard model within the ladder DB approximation and compare our results to the numerically exact diagrammatic quantum Monte Carlo (DiagMC) method. We find that the DB method qualitatively captures all the different regimes. Even quantitatively DB shows a good agreement with the exact results for single- and two-particle quantities at high and moderate temperatures. However, the ladder approximation slightly underestimates the strong antiferromagnetic fluctuations that appear in the system at low temperatures. As the final result of this thesis, we perform a parametrization of the local four-point vertex in terms of the (three-point) Hedin vertex and screened interactions in the framework of single-boson exchange (SBE) decomposition. Similar to the D-TRILEX approach the computational costs are reduced by neglecting the interaction-irreducible part of the four-point vertex. The approximated vertex is used to calculate the DMFT susceptibility for different interaction strengths at different temperatures. We find that the approximation shows a good agreement in the limits of weak and strong couplings. Thereby, our study highlights the importance of the Hedin vertex for local vertex corrections.
This thesis is devoted to the development of numerical methods for correlated electrons in realistic systems based on perturbation theories using Feynman diagrams. Electron correlations in realistic systems give rise to a wide range of interesting physical properties. Diagrammatic expansions and its low-order approximations are key building blocks of theoretical and numerical methods for studying correlated electrons. Recent developments of the diagrammatic quantum Monte Carlo (DiagMC) methods enable efficient stochastic evaluations of diagrams and does not suffer from numerical sign problem which worsens with increasing system size. It is therefore a promising direction to apply DiagMC techniques to realistic electron systems in the pursuit of ab initio calculations of correlated materials. This thesis starts by reviewing basic concepts and definitions of realistic electron systems, the perturbation theory based on Feynman diagrams, Monte Carlo evaluations of the series, as well as self-consistent diagrammatic methods. Low-order diagrammatic methods are applied to realistic calculations and benchmarked against large collections of state-of-the-art many-body methods. The thesis then proposes a diagrammatic Monte Carlo solver for realistic molecules and impurities based on a recursive evaluation of diagrams, which is tested on realistic molecules and impurities with varying temperature, system size, and interaction strength. We observe that this method is ideal for problems with many orbitals with moderate correlations, but may suffer from series divergence at strong correlations. Next, we propose the inchworm Monte Carlo algorithm for interaction expansion, which overcomes limitations of divergent diagrammatic series by replacing the standard perturbation series with a sequence of incremental series expansions. A prototype implementation is presented for system with on-site Hubbard interactions. Finally, we discuss technical aspects of numerical representations of the Green's function, which has significant impact on the efficiency of diagrammatic methods. We review several common numerical representations, and introduce our development of the sparse sampling method, which provides compact representations of the Green's function in both imaginary time and frequency as well as fast transformation formula between the two.
The exploration of quantum phases in strongly correlated electron systems represents a frontier in condensed matter physics, offering insights into phenomena such as high-temperature superconductivity, Mott insulation, and quantum spin liquids. Traditional theoretical approaches, relying on perturbative or mean-field approximations, often fall short in capturing the intricate interplay of electron correlations that drive these exotic phases. This paper delves into the critical role of exact and highly accurate diagrammatic expansions as powerful, non-perturbative tools for unraveling the emergence and characterization of quantum phases. We review the theoretical foundations of these methods, including advanced techniques like Dynamical Mean-Field Theory extensions and the Functional Renormalization Group, and discuss their ability to systematically incorporate non-local correlations. By examining their application to canonical models, we illustrate how these expansions provide a robust framework for constructing phase diagrams, predicting novel quantum states, and discerning the mechanisms underlying quantum phase transitions. We highlight the computational advancements, such as diagrammatic Monte Carlo, that enable the practical implementation of these complex theories. Finally, we discuss current challenges and future prospects, emphasizing the potential of exact diagrammatic expansions to deepen our understanding of quantum matter and guide the discovery of new materials with tailored functionalities.
In strongly correlated materials, quantum fluctuations taking place at the level of atomic sites play a central role. These local processes are captured nonperturbatively in dynamical mean field theory (DMFT). Nonlocal mechanisms, however, are also suspected to be essential for the proper description of some of these materials, including the well-known high-temperature cuprate superconductors and the more exotic systems of atoms adsorbed on semiconducting surfaces.In this thesis, the effect of nonlocal, potentially long-range fluctuations beyond the DMFT framework is investigated from two angles.First, long-ranged interactions in adatom systems, computed from first principles within the constrained random-phase approximation (cRPA), are treated within the extended DMFT (EDMFT) framework and its combination with the diagrammatic GW method (GW +EDMFT). They are shown to explain some material trends observed in these compounds. In addition, thanks to the spatial and temporal information delivered by GW+EDMFT, they solve existing puzzles raised by different experimental conclusions drawn from different probes.Second, a new approach to the Hubbard model including nonlocal correlation effects is proposed. Formally based on the local expansion of the triply-irreducible functional, this approach, dubbed TRILEX, approximates the renormalized three-leg electron-boson vertex by a local but frequency-dependent vertex computed from an impurity model with retarded density-density and spin-spin interactions. This local vertex is used to construct frequency- and momentum-dependent self-energies capturing nonlocal correlation effects. By construction, this method reconciles two theoretical pictures of cuprate superconductors, namely the spin fluctuation theory at weak interaction strengths and the doped-Mott-insulator picture at strong coupling.This novel approach is applied to the single-band Hubbard model. It is shown to reduce to DMFT at strong coupling and high temperatures, and to fluctuation-exchange theories at weak coupling, while substantial deviations from both limits are observed at intermediate coupling. There, upon doping, antiferromagnetic spin fluctuations are observed to lead to a momentum-differentiated spectral intensity on the Fermi surface, which is reminiscent of the formation of Fermi arcs in photoemission measurements on cuprate superconductors.These two methodological developments are intrinsically linked to algorithmic aspects which are reviewed in the last part of this work. In particular, an open-source library dedicated to massively parallel computations in the field of quantum many-body physics, TRIQS, is presented, with a focus on error estimation through the binning and jackknife methods. The hybridization-expansion continuous-time quantum Monte-Carlo algorithm in the segment picture -- central to the TRILEX method -- and its state-of-the-art implementation are explained. Finally, as a further illustration, a new lightweight method relying on this algorithm and designed for realistic systems, the combined screened-exchange and dynamical DMFT method (SEx+DDMFT), is presented together with an application to the BaCo2As2 compound.
In this work, we extend the dual triply irreducible local expansion (D-TRILEX) approach for correlated electronic systems by introducing a cluster reference system for the diagrammatic expansion. This framework allows us to consistently combine the exact treatment of short-range correlation effects within the cluster, with an efficient diagrammatic description of the long-range charge and spin collective fluctuations beyond the cluster. We demonstrate the effectiveness of our approach by applying it to the one-dimensional nano-ring Hubbard model, where the low dimensionality enhances non-local correlations. Our results show that the cluster extension of D-TRILEX accurately reproduces the electronic self-energy at momenta corresponding to the Fermi energy, in good agreement with the reliable Hirsch-Fye quantum Monte Carlo solution of the problem. We further compare this method with the more computationally demanding parquet dynamical vertex approximation and find that, our method yields substantially more accurate results at momenta associated with the Fermi surface. We show that the D-TRILEX diagrammatic extension drastically reduces the periodization ambiguity of cluster quantities when mapping back to the original lattice, compared to cluster dynamical mean-field theory (CDMFT). Furthermore, we identify the CDMFT impurity problem as the main source of the translational-symmetry breaking and propose a computational scheme for improving the starting point for the cluster-diagrammatic expansion.
In this work we introduce the dual boson diagrammatic Monte Carlo technique for strongly interacting electronic systems. This method combines the strength of dynamical mean-filed theory for nonperturbative description of local correlations with the systematic account of nonlocal corrections in the dual boson theory by the diagrammatic Monte Carlo approach. It allows us to get a numerically exact solution of the dual boson theory at the two-particle local vertex level for the extended Hubbard model. We show that it can be efficiently applied to description of single-particle observables in a wide range of interaction strengths. We compare our exact results for the self-energy with the ladder dual boson approach and determine a physical regime, where the description of collective electronic effects requires more accurate consideration beyond the ladder approximation. Additionally, we find that the order-by-order analysis of the perturbative diagrammatic series for the single-particle Green's function allows to estimate the transition point to the charge density wave phase.