Neural quantum states for non-Abelian lattice gauge theories with dynamical fermions

Abstract

Determining the ground state of non-Abelian lattice gauge theories coupled to dynamical fermions is key to understanding confinement and the phase structure of gauge--matter systems. We present a variational Monte Carlo framework for the ground state of the untruncated fully-continuous SU$(2)$ lattice gauge theory coupled to dynamical staggered fermions on an $L\times L$ square lattice. We work in the magnetic basis with a neural-network representation of the gauge wavefunction. The fermions are described by a gauge-covariant Gaussian fermionic correction built on a fixed Néel reference state where, for each sampled gauge configuration $\mathbf{U}$, the correction is generated by a Hermitian operator. This operator is constructed from short Wilson lines and the eigenvectors of the mass--hopping Hamiltonian, with number of variational parameters polynomial in the system size. This Gaussian structure also gives analytical expressions for all fermionic contributions to the energy and related observables in terms of the fermion occupation matrix. The results are validated against strong-coupling perturbation theory, where they recover the expected effective antiferromagnetic spin Hamiltonian. Using this framework, we map a coarse ground state phase diagram in the plane of independent electric and magnetic couplings $(g^2, λ)$ and show that a hysteresis analysis can identify the existence of phase transitions. Restoring the physical relation $λ=4/g^2$, we characterize how increasing the system size and changing the electric coupling $g^2$ move the state away from the reference Néel state, for lattice sizes $L=4,6,8$. More broadly, the method offers a sign-problem-free variational framework for continuous non-Abelian gauge groups with dynamical matter that should extend to other matter content and higher-dimensional lattices.