In this work, we introduce a multiconfigurational mixed quantum-classical many-body approach for simulating the finite-temperature correlated multi-exciton dynamics in the presence of phonon-induced static and dynamic disorder. In this mixed quantum-classical approach, the excitonic subsystem is described using a multiconfigurational wavefunction that extends beyond the mean-field limit, while the phonons are evolved quasi-classically. Using this approach, we simulate a multi-excitonic dissipative system and show how the interplay between phonon-induced dynamic disorder and exciton-exciton many-body interactions determines excitation-dependent excitonic transport and spatial correlations. Our results show that while the mean-field approach produces semi-quantitatively accurate diffusive dynamics, it does not capture the spatial correlations as expected. We find that a mean-field path approximation, where we generate pre-computed trajectories using our mean-field mixed quantum-classical approach and then perform multiconfigurational dynamics, can reproduce the spatial correlations to a good accuracy, positioning this approach as an efficient method for capturing spatial correlations in complex systems.
In this work, we introduce a multiconfigurational mixed quantum-classical many-body approach for simulating the finite-temperature correlated multi-exciton dynamics in the presence of phonon-induced static and dynamic disorder. In this mixed quantum-classical approach, the excitonic subsystem is described using a multiconfigurational wavefunction that extends beyond the mean-field limit, while the phonons are evolved quasi-classically. Using this approach, we simulate a multi-excitonic dissipative system and show how the interplay between phonon-induced dynamic disorder and exciton-exciton many-body interactions determines excitation-dependent excitonic transport and spatial correlations. Our results show that while the mean-field approach produces semi-quantitatively accurate diffusive dynamics, it does not capture the spatial correlations as expected. We find that a mean-field path approximation, where we generate pre-computed trajectories using our mean-field mixed quantum-classical approach and then perform multiconfigurational dynamics, can reproduce the spatial correlations to a good accuracy, positioning this approach as an efficient method for capturing spatial correlations in complex systems.
Exciton-polaritons, hybrid light-matter quasiparticles formed when a material interacts with a confined electric field, have experimentally been shown to exhibit mesoscale coherent quantum propagation that remains robust at room temperature. However, an accurate and direct quantum dynamical simulation of this phenomenon that does not resort to semi-classical approximations is prohibitively expensive computationally, limiting the microscopic understanding of the rich dynamical interplay among phonons, photons, and electrons under collective light-matter coupling. To address this fundamental challenge, we develop a non-Markovian master equation approach which enables the fully quantum mechanical simulation of non-equilibrium exciton-polariton dynamics and captures phonon-induced decoherence and dissipation beyond the conventional Markovian limit. To carry out this task, a procedure is developed in which the wave vector space is coarse-grained and each diagonal element of the density matrix is evolved in parallel. To demonstrate the utility of this approach, we simulate exciton-polariton transport in TIPS-pentacene. We find that our approach reasonably captures the experimentally observed renormalization of the polariton group velocity, which originates from the phonon-induced non-Markovian Lamb shift. We further show that this renormalization cannot be reproduced within conventional Markovian theories.
We present two quantum-classical hybrid methods for simulating the time-dependence of electron-phonon systems that treat electronic correlations numerically exactly and optical-phonon degrees of freedom classically. These are a time-dependent Lanczos and a matrix-product state method, each combined with the multi-trajectory Ehrenfest approach. Due to the approximations, reliable results are expected for the adiabatic regime of small phonon frequencies. We discuss the convergence properties of both methods for a system of interacting spinless fermions in one dimension and provide a benchmark for the Holstein chain. As a first application, we study the decay of charge density wave order in a system of interacting spinless fermions coupled to Einstein oscillators and in the presence of quenched disorder. We investigate the dependence of the relaxation dynamics on the electron-phonon coupling strength and provide numerical evidence that the coupling of strongly disordered systems to classical oscillators leads to delocalization, thus destabilizing the (finite-size) many-body localization in this system.
Capturing non-Markovian dynamics of open quantum systems is generally a challenging problem, especially for strongly interacting many-body systems. In this Letter, we combine recently developed non-Markovian quantum state diffusion techniques with tensor network methods to address this challenge. As a first example, we explore a Hubbard-Holstein model with dissipative phonon modes, where this new approach allows us to quantitatively assess how correlations spread in the presence of non-Markovian dissipation in a 1D many-body system. We find regimes where correlation growth can be enhanced by these effects, offering new routes for dissipatively enhancing transport and correlation spreading, relevant for both solid state and cold atom experiments.
An efficient method, the self-consistent hybrid method, is proposed for accurately simulating time-dependent quantum dynamics in complex systems. The method is based on an iterative convergence procedure for a dynamical hybrid approach. In this approach, the overall system is first partitioned into a “core” and a “reservoir” (an initial guess). The former is treated via an accurate quantum mechanical method, namely, the time-dependent multiconfiguration self-consistent field or multiconfiguration time-dependent Hartree approach, and the latter is treated via a more approximate method, e.g., classical mechanics, semiclassical initial value representations, quantum perturbation theories, etc. Next, the number of “core” degrees of freedom, as well as other variational parameters, is systematically increased to achieve numerical convergence for the overall quantum dynamics. The method is applied to two examples of quantum dissipative dynamics in the condensed phase: the spin-boson problem and the electronic resonance decay in the presence of a vibrational bath. It is demonstrated that the method provides a practical way of obtaining accurate quantum dynamical results for complex systems.
Correlations between different regions of a quantum many-body system can be quantified through measures based on entropies of (reduced) subsystem states. For closed systems, several analytical and numerical tools, e.g., hydrodynamic theories or tensor networks, can accurately capture the time-evolution of subsystem entropies, thus allowing for a profound understanding of the unitary dynamics of quantum correlations. However, so far, these methods either cannot be applied to open quantum systems or do not permit an efficient computation of quantum entropies for mixed states. Here, we make progress in solving this issue by formulating a dissipative quasi-particle picture -- describing the dynamics of quantum entropies in the hydrodynamic limit -- for a general class of noninteracting open quantum systems. Our results show that also in dissipative many-body systems, correlations are generically established through the propagation of quasi-particles.
The mean-field approximation is at the heart of our understanding of complex systems, despite its fundamental limitation of completely neglecting correlations between the elementary constituents. In a recent work [Phys. Rev. Lett. 117, 130401 (2016)], we have shown that in quantum many-body systems at finite temperature, two-point correlations can be formally separated into a thermal part and a quantum part and that quantum correlations are generically found to decay exponentially at finite temperature, with a characteristic, temperature-dependent quantum coherence length. The existence of these two different forms of correlation in quantum many-body systems suggests the possibility of formulating an approximation, which affects quantum correlations only, without preventing the correct description of classical fluctuations at all length scales. Focusing on lattice boson and quantum Ising models, we make use of the path-integral formulation of quantum statistical mechanics to introduce such an approximation, which we dub quantum mean-field (QMF) approach, and which can be readily generalized to a cluster form (cluster QMF or cQMF). The cQMF approximation reduces to cluster mean-field theory at T=0, while at any finite temperature it produces a family of systematically improved, semi-classical approximations to the quantum statistical mechanics of the lattice theory at hand. Contrary to standard MF approximations, the correct nature of thermal critical phenomena is captured by any cluster size. In the two exemplary cases of the two-dimensional quantum Ising model and of two-dimensional quantum rotors, we study systematically the convergence of the cQMF approximation towards the exact result, and show that the convergence is typically linear or sublinear in the boundary-to-bulk ratio of the clusters as $T\ensuremath{\rightarrow}0$, while it becomes faster than linear as T grows. These results pave the way towards the development of semiclassical numerical approaches based on an approximate, yet systematically improved account of quantum correlations.