© 2026 Aqora Quantum S.A.S.

Terms Privacy Legal Notice

arXiv:2602.18561

Analytic continuation of Green's functions with a neural network

Fakher F. Assaad, Johanna Erdmenger B, Anika Götz, René Meyer, Martin Rackl, Yanick Thurn

Published Feb 20, 2026• 0 citations

Abstract

An important problem in many-body physics is to reconstruct the spectral density from the imaginary-time domain Green's function. Typically, the imaginary-time Green's function is generated by Monte Carlo methods. As the one-point fermionic kernel diverges exponentially for large frequencies, numerical noise generically causes instabilities. We use a convolutional neural network to obtain the spectral density for a given imaginary time Green's function. The network is trained by data which we generate using random Gaussians. We improve the training data set available by including collision centers for the Gaussians rather than employing uniformly distributed Gaussians. Our network is constructed in such a way that its output fulfills positive semidefiniteness. We compare the results of our network with results of the Maximum Entropy method (MaxEnt), a standard method for the same reconstruction problem for the spectral density. This comparison is performed for three different cases, namely our Gaussian based test data as well as two physical models, the 1d Hubbard model showing spin-charge separation, and the two-dimensional SSH model in the self-consistent Born approximation. We find that the network outperforms MaxEnt when presented data close to the training set. For the physical models considered, MaxEnt recognizes physical features more precisely as compared to our network prediction. While it is hard to improve MaxEnt, the quality of the network depends on the training data set which can be systematically enhanced and improved.

DOI: 10.48550/arxiv.2602.18561

Related papers

Noise enhanced neural networks for analytic continuation

Juan Yao, Ce Wang, Zhiyuan Yao +1 more

Abstract Analytic continuation maps imaginary-time Green’s functions obtained by various theoretical/numerical methods to real-time response functions that can be directly compared with experiments. Analytic continuation is an important bridge between many-body theories and experiments but is also a challenging problem because such mappings are ill-conditioned. In this work, we develop a neural network (NN)-based method for this problem. The training data is generated either using synthetic Gaussian-type spectral functions or from exactly solvable models where the analytic continuation can be obtained analytically. Then, we applied the trained NN to the testing data, either with synthetic noise or intrinsic noise in Monte Carlo simulations. We conclude that the best performance is always achieved when a proper amount of noise is added to the training data. Moreover, our method can successfully capture multi-peak structure in the resulting response function for the cases with the best performance. The method can be combined with Monte Carlo simulations to compare with experiments on real-time dynamics.

arXiv:2111.12266•Machine Learning Science and Technology•May 12, 2022•14 citations

Training biases in machine learning for the analytic continuation of quantum many-body Green's functions

Rong Zhang, Maximilian E. Merkel, Sophie Beck +1 more

We address the problem of analytic continuation of imaginary-frequency Green's functions, which is crucial in many-body physics, using machine learning based on a multilevel residual neural network. We specifically address potential biases that can be introduced due to the use of artificially created spectral functions that are employed to train the neural network. We also implement an uncertainty estimation of the predicted spectral function, based on Monte Carlo dropout, which allows us to identify frequency regions where the prediction might not be accurate, and we study the effect of noise, in particular also for situations where the noise level during training is different from that in the actual data. Our analysis demonstrates that this method can indeed achieve a high quality of prediction, comparable to or better than the widely used maximum entropy method, but that further improvement is currently limited by the lack of true data that can be used for training. We also benchmark our approach by applying it to the case of ${\mathrm{SrVO}}_{3}$, where an accurate spectral function has been obtained from dynamical mean-field theory using a solver that works directly on the real frequency axis.

arXiv:2206.07493•Physical Review Research•Nov 7, 2022•8 citations

Neural network analytic continuation for Monte Carlo: Improvement by statistical errors

Kai-Wei Sun, Fa Wang

This study explores the use of neural network-based analytic continuation to extract spectra from Monte Carlo data. We apply this technique to both synthetic and Monte Carlo-generated data. The training sets for neural networks are carefully synthesized without “data leakage”. We find that the training set should match the input correlation functions in terms of statistical error properties, such as noise level, noise dependence on imaginary time, and imaginary time-displaced correlations. We have developed a systematic method to synthesize such training datasets. Our improved algorithm outperforms the widely used maximum entropy method in highly noisy situations. As an example, our method successfully extracted the dynamic structure factor of the spin-1/2 Heisenberg chain from quantum Monte Carlo simulations.

arXiv:2302.11317•Chinese Physics B•Apr 16, 2023•4 citations

Analytic continuation via domain knowledge free machine learning

Hongkee Yoon, Jae-Hoon Sim, Myung Joon Han

We present a machine-learning approach to a long-standing issue in quantum many-body physics, namely, analytic continuation. This notorious ill-conditioned problem of obtaining spectral function from an imaginary time Green's function has been a focus of new method developments for past decades. Here we demonstrate the usefulness of modern machine-learning techniques including convolutional neural networks and the variants of a stochastic gradient descent optimizer. The machine-learning continuation kernel is successfully realized without any ``domain knowledge,'' which means that any physical ``prior'' is not utilized in the kernel construction and the neural networks ``learn'' the knowledge solely from ``training.'' The outstanding performance is achieved for both insulating and metallic band structure. Our machine-learning-based approach not only provides the more accurate spectrum than the conventional methods in terms of peak positions and heights, but is also more robust against the noise which is the required key feature for any continuation technique to be successful. Furthermore, its computation speed is ${10}^{4}\text{--}{10}^{5}$ times faster than the maximum entropy method.

arXiv:1806.03841•Physical review. B./Physical review. B•Dec 3, 2018•74 citations

Analytic continuation of noisy data using Adams Bashforth residual neural network

Xuping Xie, Feng Bao, Thomas Maier +1 more

We propose a data-driven learning framework for the analytic continuation problem in numerical quantum many-body physics. Designing an accurate and efficient framework for the analytic continuation of imaginary time using computational data is a grand challenge that has hindered meaningful links with experimental data. The standard Maximum Entropy (MaxEnt)-based method is limited by the quality of the computational data and the availability of prior information. Also, the MaxEnt is not able to solve the inversion problem under high level of noise in the data. Here we introduce a novel learning model for the analytic continuation problem using a Adams-Bashforth residual neural network (AB-ResNet). The advantage of this deep learning network is that it is model independent and, therefore, does not require prior information concerning the quantity of interest given by the spectral function. More importantly, the ResNet-based model achieves higher accuracy than MaxEnt for data with higher level of noise. Finally, numerical examples show that the developed AB-ResNet is able to recover the spectral function with accuracy comparable to MaxEnt where the noise level is relatively small.

Discrete and Continuous Dynamical Systems - S•Aug 9, 2021•6 citations

Artificial Neural Network Approach to the Analytic Continuation Problem

Romain Fournier, Lei Wang, Oleg V. Yazyev +1 more

Inverse problems are encountered in many domains of physics, with analytic continuation of the imaginary Green's function into the real frequency domain being a particularly important example. However, the analytic continuation problem is ill defined and currently no analytic transformation for solving it is known. We present a general framework for building an artificial neural network (ANN) that solves this task with a supervised learning approach. Application of the ANN approach to quantum Monte Carlo calculations and simulated Green's function data demonstrates its high accuracy. By comparing with the commonly used maximum entropy approach, we show that our method can reach the same level of accuracy for low-noise input data, while performing significantly better when the noise strength increases. The computational cost of the proposed neural network approach is reduced by almost three orders of magnitude compared to the maximum entropy method.

arXiv:1810.00913•Physical Review Letters•Feb 5, 2020•94 citations

An important problem in many-body physics is to reconstruct the spectral density from the imaginary-time domain Green's function. Typically, the imaginary-time Green's function is generated by Monte Carlo methods. As the one-point fermionic kernel diverges exponentially for large frequencies, numerical noise generically causes instabilities. We use a convolutional neural network to obtain the spectral density for a given imaginary time Green's function. The network is trained by data which we generate using random Gaussians. We improve the training data set available by including collision centers for the Gaussians rather than employing uniformly distributed Gaussians. Our network is constructed in such a way that its output fulfills positive semidefiniteness. We compare the results of our network with results of the Maximum Entropy method (MaxEnt), a standard method for the same reconstruction problem for the spectral density. This comparison is performed for three different cases, namely our Gaussian based test data as well as two physical models, the 1d Hubbard model showing spin-charge separation, and the two-dimensional SSH model in the self-consistent Born approximation. We find that the network outperforms MaxEnt when presented data close to the training set. For the physical models considered, MaxEnt recognizes physical features more precisely as compared to our network prediction. While it is hard to improve MaxEnt, the quality of the network depends on the training data set which can be systematically enhanced and improved.

Abstract Analytic continuation maps imaginary-time Green’s functions obtained by various theoretical/numerical methods to real-time response functions that can be directly compared with experiments. Analytic continuation is an important bridge between many-body theories and experiments but is also a challenging problem because such mappings are ill-conditioned. In this work, we develop a neural network (NN)-based method for this problem. The training data is generated either using synthetic Gaussian-type spectral functions or from exactly solvable models where the analytic continuation can be obtained analytically. Then, we applied the trained NN to the testing data, either with synthetic noise or intrinsic noise in Monte Carlo simulations. We conclude that the best performance is always achieved when a proper amount of noise is added to the training data. Moreover, our method can successfully capture multi-peak structure in the resulting response function for the cases with the best performance. The method can be combined with Monte Carlo simulations to compare with experiments on real-time dynamics.

We address the problem of analytic continuation of imaginary-frequency Green's functions, which is crucial in many-body physics, using machine learning based on a multilevel residual neural network. We specifically address potential biases that can be introduced due to the use of artificially created spectral functions that are employed to train the neural network. We also implement an uncertainty estimation of the predicted spectral function, based on Monte Carlo dropout, which allows us to identify frequency regions where the prediction might not be accurate, and we study the effect of noise, in particular also for situations where the noise level during training is different from that in the actual data. Our analysis demonstrates that this method can indeed achieve a high quality of prediction, comparable to or better than the widely used maximum entropy method, but that further improvement is currently limited by the lack of true data that can be used for training. We also benchmark our approach by applying it to the case of

{\mathrm{SrVO}}_{3}

, where an accurate spectral function has been obtained from dynamical mean-field theory using a solver that works directly on the real frequency axis.

This study explores the use of neural network-based analytic continuation to extract spectra from Monte Carlo data. We apply this technique to both synthetic and Monte Carlo-generated data. The training sets for neural networks are carefully synthesized without “data leakage”. We find that the training set should match the input correlation functions in terms of statistical error properties, such as noise level, noise dependence on imaginary time, and imaginary time-displaced correlations. We have developed a systematic method to synthesize such training datasets. Our improved algorithm outperforms the widely used maximum entropy method in highly noisy situations. As an example, our method successfully extracted the dynamic structure factor of the spin-1/2 Heisenberg chain from quantum Monte Carlo simulations.

We present a machine-learning approach to a long-standing issue in quantum many-body physics, namely, analytic continuation. This notorious ill-conditioned problem of obtaining spectral function from an imaginary time Green's function has been a focus of new method developments for past decades. Here we demonstrate the usefulness of modern machine-learning techniques including convolutional neural networks and the variants of a stochastic gradient descent optimizer. The machine-learning continuation kernel is successfully realized without any ``domain knowledge,'' which means that any physical ``prior'' is not utilized in the kernel construction and the neural networks ``learn'' the knowledge solely from ``training.'' The outstanding performance is achieved for both insulating and metallic band structure. Our machine-learning-based approach not only provides the more accurate spectrum than the conventional methods in terms of peak positions and heights, but is also more robust against the noise which is the required key feature for any continuation technique to be successful. Furthermore, its computation speed is

{10}^{4}\text{--}{10}^{5}

times faster than the maximum entropy method.

We propose a data-driven learning framework for the analytic continuation problem in numerical quantum many-body physics. Designing an accurate and efficient framework for the analytic continuation of imaginary time using computational data is a grand challenge that has hindered meaningful links with experimental data. The standard Maximum Entropy (MaxEnt)-based method is limited by the quality of the computational data and the availability of prior information. Also, the MaxEnt is not able to solve the inversion problem under high level of noise in the data. Here we introduce a novel learning model for the analytic continuation problem using a Adams-Bashforth residual neural network (AB-ResNet). The advantage of this deep learning network is that it is model independent and, therefore, does not require prior information concerning the quantity of interest given by the spectral function. More importantly, the ResNet-based model achieves higher accuracy than MaxEnt for data with higher level of noise. Finally, numerical examples show that the developed AB-ResNet is able to recover the spectral function with accuracy comparable to MaxEnt where the noise level is relatively small.

Inverse problems are encountered in many domains of physics, with analytic continuation of the imaginary Green's function into the real frequency domain being a particularly important example. However, the analytic continuation problem is ill defined and currently no analytic transformation for solving it is known. We present a general framework for building an artificial neural network (ANN) that solves this task with a supervised learning approach. Application of the ANN approach to quantum Monte Carlo calculations and simulated Green's function data demonstrates its high accuracy. By comparing with the commonly used maximum entropy approach, we show that our method can reach the same level of accuracy for low-noise input data, while performing significantly better when the noise strength increases. The computational cost of the proposed neural network approach is reduced by almost three orders of magnitude compared to the maximum entropy method.