A detailed derivation of the recently proposed time-dependent numerical renormalization-group (TD-NRG) approach to nonequilibrium dynamics in quantum-impurity systems is presented. We demonstrate that the method is suitable for fermionic as well as bosonic baths. Comparisons with exact analytical results for the charge relaxation in the resonant-level model and for dephasing in the spin-boson model establish the accuracy of the method. The real-time dynamics of a single spin coupled to each type of bath is investigated. We use the TD-NRG to calculate the spin relaxation and spin precession of a single Kondo impurity. The short- and long-time dynamics are studied as a function of temperature in the ferromagnetic and antiferromagnetic regimes. The short-time dynamics agrees very well with analytical results obtained at second order in the exchange coupling
J. In the ferromagnetic regime, the transient spin decay is described by the scaling variable $x=2{\ensuremath{\rho}}_{F}\ensuremath{\mid}J(T)\ensuremath{\mid}Tt$. In the antiferromagnetic regime, the long-time decay is governed for
T<TK by the Kondo time scale
1∕TK. Here ${\ensuremath{\rho}}_{F}$ is the conduction-electron density of states,
TK is the Kondo temperature, and
J(T) is the effective exchange coupling at temperature
T. Results for spin precession are obtained by rotating the external magnetic field from the
x axis to the
z axis.
Using the non-perturbative numerical renormalisation group (NRG) we analyse purely fermionic as well as more complex Bose-Fermi quantum impurity systems on their equilibrium properties and beyond: We present an extensive exploration of real-time dynamics for various quenches using the time-dependent NRG. For the purely fermionic system, we use the Single-impurity Anderson model (SIAM) in which the impurity is a localised orbital hybridising with a surrounding conduction band. The model enables charge scattering with a pseudo-gap scattering rate and features a quantum critical point separating the local moment (LM) phase with an unscreened spin moment from a symmetric strong coupling (SSC) phase with a fractionally screened spin moment. The real-time dynamics of the local double occupancy nicely thermalises for quenches regarding the SSC phase. Whereas for quenches within or into the LM phase the double occupancy systematically deviates from thermal equilibrium for long times. A comparison with results of a recently published time-dependent Gutwiller approach reveals clear discrepancies since this approach restricts the formation of the local moment only on the impurity site. We extend the system by an additional bosonic bath leading to the Bose-Fermi Anderson model (BFAM) and study the influence of the additional bosonic degrees of freedom on the real-time dynamics. In equilibrium the bosonic bath features an additional quantum critical point leading to a localised phase once the coupling to a sub-ohmic bosonic bath exceeds a critical value. In general the coupled bosonic bath leads to a renormalisation of the Coulomb interaction. We show that the dynamics is influenced by the specific choice of the bath exponents. For a F-type combination the non-equilibrium dynamics can be completely reproduced by an effective purely fermionic SIAM while for a B-type combination the nature of the bosonic bath and the coupling strength has a profound impact on the electron dynamics which can only be partially understood by an effective SIAM. Furthermore, we investigate the spin dynamics of an initially polarised impurity spin which is coupled to a fermionic and a bosonic bath leading to the Bose-Fermi Kondo model (BFKM). Through the coupling to the fermionic bath the polarisation vanishes with time. We show that in analogy to the spin-boson model (SBM) an initially coupling to the bosonic bath affects the real-time dynamics fundamentally leading to a remaining polarisation for long times.
Numerically "exact" methods addressing the dynamics of coupled electron-phonon systems have been intensively developed. Nevertheless, the corresponding results for the electron mobility μdc are scarce, even for the one-dimensional (1d) Holstein model. Building on our recent progress on single-particle properties, here we develop the momentum-space hierarchical equations of motion (HEOM) method to evaluate real-time two-particle correlation functions of the 1d Holstein model at a finite temperature. We compute numerically "exact" dynamics of the current-current correlation function up to real times sufficiently long to capture the electron's diffusive motion and provide reliable results for μdc in a wide range of model parameters. In contrast to the smooth ballistic-to-diffusive crossover in the weak-coupling regime, we observe a temporally limited slow-down of the electron on intermediate time scales already in the intermediate-coupling regime, which translates to a finite-frequency peak in the optical response. Our momentum-space formulation lowers the numerical effort with respect to existing HEOM-method implementations, while we remove the numerical instabilities inherent to the undamped-mode HEOM by devising an appropriate hierarchy closing scheme. Still, our HEOM remains unstable at too low temperatures, for too strong electron-phonon coupling, and for too fast phonons.