Twist fields are a powerful formal tool to compute Rényi entropies in quantum many-body systems, but their conventional formulation in tensor network states involves operations acting on virtual degrees of freedom, which are not directly accessible in experiments. In this work, we construct explicit local operators acting on the physical Hilbert space whose expectation values reproduce the action of twist fields in matrix product states. Our construction is exact in the injectivity limit and when the tensor is chosen at the center of orthogonality, and provides a direct operational method to evaluate Rényi entropies without accessing auxiliary tensor indices. We test our formulation numerically in the transverse-field Ising model, demonstrating rapid convergence to the exact entanglement entropy as the injectivity scale is reached. Furthermore, we show that twist operators determined from relatively small reference systems can be reliably transferred to larger systems, once the reference size exceeds a characteristic scale set by the correlation length. Since the resulting operators admit a decomposition in terms of a finite number of local observables, our results provide a scalable and experimentally accessible framework to probe entanglement in quantum simulators.
Twist fields are a powerful formal tool to compute Rényi entropies in quantum many-body systems, but their conventional formulation in tensor network states involves operations acting on virtual degrees of freedom, which are not directly accessible in experiments. In this work, we construct explicit local operators acting on the physical Hilbert space whose expectation values reproduce the action of twist fields in matrix product states. Our construction is exact in the injectivity limit and when the tensor is chosen at the center of orthogonality, and provides a direct operational method to evaluate Rényi entropies without accessing auxiliary tensor indices. We test our formulation numerically in the transverse-field Ising model, demonstrating rapid convergence to the exact entanglement entropy as the injectivity scale is reached. Furthermore, we show that twist operators determined from relatively small reference systems can be reliably transferred to larger systems, once the reference size exceeds a characteristic scale set by the correlation length. Since the resulting operators admit a decomposition in terms of a finite number of local observables, our results provide a scalable and experimentally accessible framework to probe entanglement in quantum simulators.
Local-operator entanglement (LOE) quantifies the nonlocal structure of Heisenberg operators and serves as a diagnostic of many-body chaos. We provide rigorous bounds showing when an operator can be well-approximated by a matrix-product operator (MPO), given asymptotic scaling of its LOE α-Rényi entropies. Specifically, we prove that a volume law scaling for α≥1 implies that the operator cannot be approximated efficiently as an MPO while faithfully reproducing all expectation values. On the other hand, if we restrict to correlations over a relevant sub-class of (ensembles of) states, then logarithmic scaling of the α<1 entropies implies MPO simulability. This result covers a range of relevant quantities, including infinite temperature autocorrelation functions, out-of-time-ordered correlators, and average-case expectation values over ensembles of computational basis states. Beyond this regime, we provide numerical evidence together with a random matrix model to argue that this simulability result also typically holds for arbitrary states. Our results put on firm footing the heuristic expectation that a low operator entanglement implies efficient tensor network representability, extending celebrated foundational results from the theory of matrix-product states and providing a formal link between quantum chaos and classical simulability.
This dissertation contributes to the ongoing effort of understanding the origins and applications of real-space renormalization group methods in tensor network representations of classical and quantum many-body systems. First, we construct a matrix product operator ansatz to coarse-grain real-space transfer matrices of matrix product state descriptions of one-dimensional quantum spin chains. By treating the physical spin as an impurity, we unravel the virtual entanglement degrees of freedom of matrix product states into a layered structure to reveal an inherent renormalization group scale. Secondly, we rephrase tensor network renormalization for two-dimensional classical lattice models in a manifestly nonnegative way. The resulting real-space renormalization group flow preserves positivity and hence yields an interpretation in terms of Hamiltonian flows, reconciling modern real-space tensor network renormalization methods with traditional block-spin approaches. Thirdly, we study non-local symmetries in tensor networks by expressing two-dimensional classical partition functions in terms of strange correlators of judiciously chosen product states and string-net wave functions. We exhibit and exploit the emerging non-local symmetries of the partition function at criticality and highlight parallels between topological sectors and conformal primary fields in the shared framework of matrix product operator symmetries. Additionally, we provide a complementary perspective on real-space renormalization by recognizing known tensor network renormalization methods as the approximate truncation of an exactly coarse-grained strange correlator.
In this paper we develop a new approach to the investigation of the bi-partite entanglement entropy in integrable quantum spin chains. Our method employs the well-known replica trick, thus taking a replica version of the spin chain model as starting point. At each site i of this new model we construct an operator T-i which acts as a cyclic permutation among the n replicas of the model. Infinite products of T-i give rise to local operators, precursors of branch-point twist fields of quantum field theory. The entanglement entropy is then expressed in terms of correlation functions of such operators. Employing this approach we investigate the von Neumann and Renyi entropies of a particularly interesting quantum state occurring as a limit (in a compact convergence topology) of the antiferromagnetic XXZ quantum spin chain. We find that, for large sizes, the entropy scales logarithmically, but not conformally.
Efficient methods to access the entanglement of a quantum many-body state, where the complexity generally scales exponentially with the system size N, have long been a concern. Here we propose the Schmidt tensor network state (Schmidt TNS) that efficiently represents the Schmidt decomposition of finite- and even infinite-size quantum states with nontrivial bipartition boundary. The key idea is to represent the Schmidt coefficients (i.e., entanglement spectrum) and transformations in the decomposition to tensor networks (TNs) with linearly scaled complexity versus N. Specifically, the transformations are written as the TNs formed by local unitary tensors, and the Schmidt coefficients are encoded in a positive-definite matrix product state (MPS). Translational invariance can be imposed on the TNs and MPS for the infinite-size cases. The validity of Schmidt TNS is demonstrated by simulating the ground state of the quasi-one-dimensional spin model with geometrical frustration. Our results show that the MPS encoding the Schmidt coefficients is weakly entangled even when the entanglement entropy of the decomposed state is strong. This justifies the efficiency of using MPS to encode the Schmidt coefficients, and promises an exponential speedup on the full-state sampling tasks.
We study the conditions under which Matrix Product States (MPS) or Matrix Product Operators are exact eigenvectors of an extensive local operator, such as a Hamiltonian. By suitably choosing the local operator, this covers a wide range of settings: Exact eigenstates of Hamiltonians, including scar states, exact MPS trajectories for driven quantum systems, steady states of local Lindbladians, generalized symmetries of either Hamiltonians or density matrices, and many more. Our key result is that a local, fixed-size equation---namely, how a single term in the operator acts on a block of tensors---provides a necessary and sufficient condition for exact solutions. This local characterization allows us to obtain the full space of MPS solutions to all of the aforementioned problems; in particular, we exemplify the power of our results by recovering the quantum group symmetries of the XXZ model. We also discuss applications to numerical algorithms with MPS and the generalization of our results to 2D, i.e., projected entangled pair states (PEPS).
In this thesis, we use the new numerical method multiscale entanglement
renormalization ansatz (MERA) to study the one dimensional spin system. This
method, MERA, utilizes a network of tensors to represent quantum many-body
systems on a lattice. Other examples of tensor network state are matrix product
states (MPSs) for 1D systems, tree tensor networks (TTNs) for systems with a
tree shape, and projected entangled-pair states (PEPSs) for 2D systems and be-
yond. The three structures dier in the graph that denes how the tensors are
interconnected into a network: The graphs for MPSs, TTNs, and 2D PEPSs are,
respectively, a chain, a tree, and a 2D lattice. Importantly, from these tensor
networks the expectation value of local observables can be computed eciently.
Developing algorithms to simulate quantum many-body systems is important
for understanding and studying the physical principles. And these may become
powerful tools for the analysis of quantum computation and quantum information
theory. But in general ecient simulation is dicult, due to the fundamental
quantum physical laws.
The main method we have studied and worked on is multiscale entangle-
ment renormalization ansatz (MERA) which is a variational ansatz for many-
body states. MERA is a tree tensor network for 1D, 2D systems and beyond.
We have developed code of ternary-MERA to compute the ground state energy,
expected values of local observables, and correlators for 1D lattice systems. In
a nutshell, MERA is an algorithm for entanglement renormalization which is a
numerical technique based on locally reorganizing the Hilbert space of a quantum
many-body system with the aim to reduce the amount of entanglement in its wave
function. We use this method to study 1D Ising model, XXZ model, and J1 - J2
model, and then comparing the numerical results with exact diagonalization (ED)
and density matrix renormalization group (DMRG).