Abstract Motivated by the need for high-precision benchmark results for basic quantum many-body models, several ground state properties of the square lattice S = 1 / 2 Heisenberg antiferromagnet are computed (the energy, order parameter, spin stiffness, spinwave velocity, long-wavelength susceptibility and staggered susceptibility) using extensive quantum Monte Carlo simulations with the stochastic series expansion method. Moderately sized lattices are studied at temperatures T sufficiently low to realize the T → 0 limit, with significantly reduced statistical errors relative to previous works. Results for periodic L × L lattices with L ∈ [ 6 , 96 ] are tabulated versus L and extrapolations to infinite system size are carried out. The relative statistical errors of finite-size energies are below 10 −7 . The extrapolated ground state energy density is e 0 = − 0.669 441 857 ( 7 ) , where the number within parentheses is the statistical error (one standard deviation) of the preceding digit. This value represents an improvement in precision of three orders of magnitude over the previous best result. The leading and subleading finite-size corrections to e 0 are in full quantitative agreement with predictions from chiral perturbation theory, thus further supporting the soundness of both the extrapolations and the theory. The extrapolated sublattice magnetization is m s = 0.307 447 ( 2 ) , which agrees well with previous estimates but with a much smaller statistical error. The coefficient of the linear in L −1 correction to m s 2 agrees with the value from chiral perturbation theory and the presence of a factor ln γ ( L ) in the second-order correction is also confirmed, with the previously unknown value of the exponent being γ = 0.82 ( 4 ) . The finite-size corrections to the staggered susceptibility point to logarithmic corrections in this quantity as well. To facilitate benchmarking of methods for which periodic boundary conditions are challenging, results for systems with open and cylindrical boundaries are also listed and their spatially inhomogeneous order parameters are analyzed.
Puzzled by the indication of a new critical theory for the spin-1/2 Heisenberg model with a spatially staggered anisotropy on the square lattice as suggested in \cite{Wenzel08}, we re-investigate the phase transition of this model induced by dimerization using first principle Monte Carlo simulations. We focus on studying the finite-size scaling of
ρs1L and
ρs2L, where
L stands for the spatial box size used in the simulations and
ρsi with
i∈{1,2} is the spin-stiffness in
i-direction. From our Monte Carlo data, we find that
ρs2L suffers a much less severe correction compared to that of
ρs1L. Therefore
ρs2L is a better quantity than
ρs1L for finite-size scaling analysis concerning the limitation of the availability of large volumes data in our study. Further, motivated by the so-called cubical regime in magnon chiral perturbation theory, we additionally perform a finite-size scaling analysis on our Monte Carlo data with the assumption that the ratio of spatial winding numbers squared is fixed through all simulations. As a result, the physical shape of the system remains fixed in our calculations. The validity of this new idea is confirmed by studying the phase transition driven by spatial anisotropy for the ladder anisotropic Heisenberg model. With this new strategy, even from
ρs1L which receives the most serious correction among the observables considered in this study, we arrive at a value for the critical exponent
ν which is consistent with the expected
O(3) value by using only up to
L=64 data points.
The quantitative description of long-range order remains a challenge in quantum many-body physics. We provide zero-temperature results from two complementary methods for the ground-state energy per site, the sublattice magnetization, the spin gap, and the transverse spin correlation length for the spin-1/2 quantum XXZ antiferromagnet on the square lattice. On the one hand, we use exact, large-scale quantum Monte Carlo (QMC) simulations. On the other hand, we use the semianalytic approach based on continuous similarity transformations in terms of elementary magnon excitations. Our findings confirm the applicability and quantitative validity of both approaches along the full parameter axis from the Ising point to the symmetry-restoring phase transition at the Heisenberg point and further provide quantitative reference results in the thermodynamic limit. In addition, we analytically derive the relation between the dispersion and the correlation length at zero temperature in arbitrary dimension, and discuss improved second-moment QMC estimators.
Various lattice geometries and boundary conditions are used to investigate valence-bond-solid (VBS) ordering in the ground state of an
S=1/2 square-lattice quantum spin model---the
J-
Q model, in which four- or six-spin interactions
Q are added to the standard Heisenberg exchange
J. Ground-state results for finite systems (with up to thousands of spins) are obtained using an unbiased projector quantum Monte Carlo method. It is found that great care has to be taken when extrapolating the order parameter to infinite lattice size, in particular, in cylinder geometry. Even though strong VBS order exists in two dimensions, and is established clearly with increasing system size on $L\ifmmode\times\else\texttimes\fi{}L$ lattices (or ${L}_{x}\ifmmode\times\else\texttimes\fi{}{L}_{y}$ lattices with a fixed aspect ratio
Lx/Ly of order 1), only short-range VBS correlations are observed on long cylinders (when ${L}_{x}\ensuremath{\rightarrow}\ensuremath{\infty}$ at fixed
Ly). The correlation length increases with the cylinder width, until long-range order sets in at a ``critical'' width. This width is very large even when the 2D order is relatively strong. For example, for a system in which the order parameter is
70 of the largest possible value,
Ly=8 is required for ordering. Extrapolations of the VBS order parameter based on correlation functions (the square of the order parameter) for small $L\ifmmode\times\else\texttimes\fi{}L$ lattices can also be misleading. For a
20-ordered system, results for
L up to $\ensuremath{\approx}$20 appear to extrapolate clearly to a vanishing order parameter, while for larger lattices the scaling behavior crosses over and extrapolates to a nonzero value (with exponentially small finite-size corrections). The VBS order parameter also exhibits interesting edge effects related the known emergent U(1) symmetry close to a ``deconfined'' critical point, which, if not considered properly, can lead to wrong conclusions for the thermodynamic limit. The observed finite-size behavior for small $L\ifmmode\times\else\texttimes\fi{}L$ lattices and long cylinders is very similar to that predicted for a
Z2 spin liquid. The results therefore raise concerns about recent numerical work claiming
Z2 spin-liquid ground states in 2D frustrated quantum spin systems, in particular, the Heisenberg model with nearest and next-nearest-neighbor couplings. Based on the results presented so far, a VBS state in this system cannot be ruled out.
We propose an efficient numerical method to obtain local order parameter in two-dimensional systems using spiral boundary conditions. As a benchmark, we first estimate the magnitude of staggered magnetization for the
S=1/2 XXZ Heisenberg model on a square lattice in the whole range of the XXZ anisotropy by density-matrix renormalization group technique. The validity of our method is confirmed by comparing our results with the previous analytical and numerical studies. Then, as further demonstration, we apply our method to obtain the staggered magnetization for the higher-spin cases from
S=1 to
S=6. The accuracy of the obtained results is validated using the series expansion and the spin-wave theory.
We demonstrate that Monte Carlo sampling can be used to efficiently extract the expectation value of projected entangled pair states with a large virtual bond dimension. We use the simple update rule introduced by H. C. Jiang et al. [Phys. Rev. Lett 101, 090603 (2008)] to obtain the tensors describing the ground state wave function of the antiferromagnetic Heisenberg model and evaluate the finite size energy and staggered magnetization for square lattices with periodic boundary conditions of linear sizes up to
L=16 and virtual bond dimensions up to
D=16. The finite size magnetization errors are
0.003(2) and
0.013(2) at
D=16 for a system of size
L=8,16, respectively. Finite
D extrapolation provides exact finite size magnetization for
L=8, and reduces the magnetization error to
0.005(3) for
L=16, significantly improving the previous state-of-the-art results.
In this work, we benchmark the well-controlled and numerically accurate exponential thermal tensor renormalization group (XTRG) in the simulation of interacting spin models in two dimensions. Finite temperature introduces a finite thermal correlation length $\ensuremath{\xi}$, such that for system sizes $L\ensuremath{\gg}\ensuremath{\xi}$ finite-size calculations actually simulate the thermodynamic limit. In this paper, we focus on the square lattice Heisenberg antiferromagnet (SLH) and quantum Ising models (QIM) on open and cylindrical geometries up to width
W=10. We explore various one-dimensional mapping paths in the matrix product operator (MPO) representation, whose performance is clearly shown to be geometry dependent. We benchmark against quantum Monte Carlo (QMC) data, yet also the series-expansion thermal tensor network results. Thermal properties including the internal energy, specific heat, and spin structure factors, etc. are computed with high precision, obtaining excellent agreement with QMC results. XTRG also allows us to reach remarkably low temperatures. For SLH, we obtain an energy per site ${u}_{g}^{*}\ensuremath{\simeq}\ensuremath{-}0.6694(4)$ and a spontaneous magnetization ${m}_{S}^{*}\ensuremath{\simeq}0.30(1)$ already consistent with the ground-state properties, which is obtained from extrapolated low-
T thermal data on $W\ensuremath{\le}8$ cylinders and $W\ensuremath{\le}10$ open strips, respectively. We extract an exponential divergence versus
T of the structure factor
S(M), as well as the correlation length $\ensuremath{\xi}$, at the ordering wave vector $M=(\ensuremath{\pi},\ensuremath{\pi})$, which represents the renormalized classical behavior and can be observed over a narrow but appreciable temperature window, by analyzing the finite-size data by XTRG simulations. For the QIM with a finite-temperature phase transition, we employ several thermal quantities, including the specific heat, Binder ratio, as well as the MPO entanglement to determine the critical temperature
Tc.