Variational Approach to the Dynamics of Quantum Fields

Yiying Yan, Zhiguo Lü, JunYan Luo

We present a time-dependent variational approach with the multiple-Davydov-${\text{D}}_{2}$ trial state to simulate the dynamics of light-matter systems when the field is initially in a coherent state with an arbitrary finite mean photon number. The variational approach captures not only the system dynamics but also the field dynamics and is applicable to a variety of quantum models of light-matter interaction such as the Jaynes-Cummings model, Rabi model, and Dicke model and is capable of tackling multimode quantized fields. With a comparison of the variational and semiclassical dynamics of both the system and field, we illustrate that the variational dynamics from the quantum models agrees with those from the corresponding semiclassical models as long as the mean number of photons is sufficiently large. Moreover, we illustrate that in the crossover between the quantum and semiclassical limits, the quantum corrections lead to the collapse of the oscillations in dynamics, which is absent in the semiclassical models. The variational approach provides a unified treatment of light-matter interaction from the quantum to the semiclassical limit.

Jan Dereziński, Christian Gérard

Paulo F. Bedaque, Hersh Kumar, Suryansh Rajawat +1 more

We present a variational approach to quantum field theory based on wavefunctions parameterized by neural networks. While variational methods have a celebrated history across many fields, their application to quantum field theory has been limited by well-known challenges. We show that neural-network wavefunctions, combined with modern machine-learning techniques, enable competitive variational calculations in nontrivial field theories. As a demonstration, we reproduce the essential features of the two-dimensional nonlinear $σ$-model: asymptotic freedom, dynamical mass generation and the model's step-scaling function.

Remus-Amilcar Ionescu

Y. Tsue, D. Vautherin, Toru Matsui

Variational method is applied to describe Bose-Einstein condensates (BEC) interacting via a pseudo-potential, taking into account quantum fluctuations around the mean field by the Gaussian approximation. Contributions from the pair-wise scattering by the singular potential should be removed carefully to avoid double countings in the perturbation series in terms of original bare interaction. We show that this procedure removes all dangerous terms which contain divergences.

Béla Gazdy