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arXiv:2605.02228

Validity and Limits of Low Order Hybridization Expansion Approaches for Multi-Orbital Systems

Dolev Goldberger, Ido Zemach, Lei Zhang, Yang Yu, Emanuel Gull, Guy Cohen, André Erpenbeck

cond-mat.str-elcond-mat.mes-hallquant-phSubmitted May 4, 2026• Announced May 5, 2026• 0 citations
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Abstract

Low-order hybridization expansion methods such as the non-crossing approximation (NCA) and the one-crossing approximation (OCA) are widely used impurity solvers in the study of strongly correlated systems, yet their accuracy in genuine multi-orbital settings remains poorly understood. Using the decoupled orbital limit as a controlled reference point, we derive analytic results connecting multi-orbital restricted propagators and Green's functions to their single-orbital counterparts, identify the diagrammatic mechanisms responsible for the breakdown of low-order methods in multi-orbital settings, and determine their regimes of applicability. Our central finding is that the accuracy of these methods is governed by the least correlated orbital: i.e., the orbital with the most rapidly decaying retarded Green's function. That orbital's properties are transferred to all other orbitals through a spurious coupling generated by the truncated expansion, thereby suppressing correlation-induced features such as the Kondo resonance. This occurs even in orbitals that are themselves strongly correlated within single-orbital calculations using the same approximation scheme. We confirm this numerically across representative two-orbital model systems in the steady-state, systematically identifying the parameter regimes in which low-order methods succeed or fail. Our results provide a practical guide for assessing when insights from single-orbital calculations carry over to multi-orbital settings, and serve as a benchmark for the development and validation of higher-order multi-orbital impurity solvers.

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Low-order hybridization expansion methods such as the non-crossing approximation (NCA) and the one-crossing approximation (OCA) are widely used impurity solvers in the study of strongly correlated systems, yet their accuracy in genuine multi-orbital settings remains poorly understood. Using the decoupled orbital limit as a controlled reference point, we derive analytic results connecting multi-orbital restricted propagators and Green's functions to their single-orbital counterparts, identify the diagrammatic mechanisms responsible for the breakdown of low-order methods in multi-orbital settings, and determine their regimes of applicability. Our central finding is that the accuracy of these methods is governed by the least correlated orbital: i.e., the orbital with the most rapidly decaying retarded Green's function. That orbital's properties are transferred to all other orbitals through a spurious coupling generated by the truncated expansion, thereby suppressing correlation-induced features such as the Kondo resonance. This occurs even in orbitals that are themselves strongly correlated within single-orbital calculations using the same approximation scheme. We confirm this numerically across representative two-orbital model systems in the steady-state, systematically identifying the parameter regimes in which low-order methods succeed or fail. Our results provide a practical guide for assessing when insights from single-orbital calculations carry over to multi-orbital settings, and serve as a benchmark for the development and validation of higher-order multi-orbital impurity solvers.
Quantum impurity models, which describe the coupling between interacting orbitals and a non-interacting bath, play a central role in the physics of strongly correlated electron systems. Solving a quantum impurity model in general requires the use of non-perturbative numerical methods. Hamiltonian-based approaches, which rely on an explicit bath discretization, are typically limited to a small number of bath sites or small entanglement, and diagrammatic methods suffer from sign problems, slow convergence, or diagram truncation approximations. Here we show that these two classes of methods can be combined: augmenting diagrammatic methods with a small auxiliary bath can reduce the residual problem to a regime where low-order perturbation theory is highly accurate and rapidly converging. In a simple benchmark, the precision of the hybrid approach surpasses bold-line calculations by several orders of magnitude; for a strongly interacting two-orbital model with a severe sign problem, convergence is achieved at three orders of magnitude lower computational cost than competing methods; and convergence to the unknown exact result is rapidly accelerated in a difficult realistic problem. Our results establish a practical route to high-precision quantum impurity solutions in correlated quantum systems.
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The solution of an auxiliary quantum impurity system is the computationally expensive step in dynamical mean field theory simulations of lattice models and materials. In this review, we discuss Monte Carlo based impurity solvers, which are suitable for a wide range of applications. In particular, we present an efficient implementation of the hybridization expansion approach, which enables the simulation of multiorbital impurity problems with off-diagonal and complex hybridizations, and dynamically screened (retarded) density-density interactions. As a complementary approach, we discuss an impurity solver based on the determinant Monte Carlo method, which scales favorably with inverse temperature and hence provides access to the very low temperature regime. The usefulness of these state-of-the-art impurity solvers is demonstrated with applications to the downfolding problem, i.e., the systematic derivation of dynamically screened interactions for low-energy effective models, and to pyrochlore iridates, where the spin-orbit coupling leads to complex hybridization functions in a multi-orbital system. As a benchmark for cluster extensions of dynamical mean field theory, we also present results from lattice Monte Carlo simulations for the momentum dependence of the pseudo-gap in the half-filled two-dimensional Hubbard model.
We present a method for calculating the full counting statistics of a nonequilibrium quantum system based on the propagator noncrossing approximation (NCA). This numerically inexpensive method can provide higher-order cumulants for extended parameter regimes, rendering it attractive for a wide variety of purposes. We compare NCA results to Born-Markov quantum master equations (QME) results to show that they can access different physics, and to numerically exact inchworm quantum Monte Carlo data to assess their validity. As a demonstration of its power, the NCA method is employed to study the impact of correlations on higher-order cumulants in the nonequilibrium Anderson impurity model. The four lowest-order cumulants are examined, allowing us to establish that correlation effects have a profound influence on the underlying transport distributions. Higher-order cumulants are therefore demonstrated to be a proxy for the presence of Kondo correlations in a way that cannot be captured by simple QME methods.
Numerical methods capable of handling nonequilibrium impurity models are essential for the study of transport problems and the solution of the nonequilibrium dynamical mean-field theory (DMFT) equations. In the strong correlation regime, the self-consistently resummed hybridization expansion is an appealing strategy, which however has been employed so far mainly in the lowest-order noncrossing approximation. At higher orders, standard implementations become numerically costly, but a significant speed-up can be achieved by evaluating multidimensional integrals in an approximate factorized form. Here we develop a one-crossing approximation solver based on the recently introduced quantics tensor cross interpolation, and demonstrate its accuracy and efficiency with applications to the Anderson impurity model and nonequilibrium steady-state DMFT calculations for the Hubbard model.
The single impurity Anderson model (SIAM) is one of the most recurrent model Hamiltonians in condensed matter physics, playing an important role in the description of systems where electron-electron interactions can not be neglected, such as strongly interacting quantum dots and doped metals with magnetic impurities. In order to address the variety of scenarios in which the model can be applied many impurity solvers were developed for the SIAM. It is consensus that there is no universal method that provides reliable results for the model parameter space of experimental interest. The main methods found in the literature di ers signi cantly on the computational cost involved in the numerical implementation and in the range of the model parameters where the used method is reliable. In this undergraduate dissertation we study the reliability of some impurity solvers for the SIAM, namely, the equations of motion (EOM) method, the numerical renormalization group (NRG), the non-crossing approximation (NCA), and the one crossing approximation (OCA). We study the Green's function of a quantum dot using the aforementioned impurity solvers and then calculate the density of states as a function of the temperature and the chemical potential of the quantum dot . Our analysis is focused on the Coulomb blockade and the Kondo physics. We report that some standard approximations based on the EOM technique display a rather unexpected poor behaviour in the Coulomb blockade regime even at high temperatures.