The method of moments of an absorption line is generalized to allow for a continuous level scheme. The range of problems which can be treated by this generalized method partially overlaps with those encountered by traditional perturbative methods. A test case consisting of an impurity ion that relaxes to conduction-electron bath is studied, and the compatibility of this method with other perturbative methods is demonstrated. It is also argued that this method is applicable to problems where density-matrix expansions are not valid. Further possible applications are discussed.
The method of moments of an absorption line is generalized to allow for a continuous level scheme. The range of problems which can be treated by this generalized method partially overlaps with those encountered by traditional perturbative methods. A test case consisting of an impurity ion that relaxes to conduction-electron bath is studied, and the compatibility of this method with other perturbative methods is demonstrated. It is also argued that this method is applicable to problems where density-matrix expansions are not valid. Further possible applications are discussed.
Multiorbital quantum impurity models with general interaction and hybridization terms appear in a wide range of applications, including embedding, quantum transport, and nanoscience. However, most quantum impurity solvers are restricted to a few impurity orbitals, discretized baths, diagonal hybridizations, or density-density interactions. Here, we generalize the inchworm quantum Monte Carlo method to the interaction expansion, and we explore its application to typical single- and multiorbital problems encountered in investigations of impurity and lattice models. Our implementation generically outperforms bare and bold-line quantum Monte Carlo algorithms in the interaction expansion. For the systems studied here, our implementation remains inferior to the more specialized hybridization expansion and auxiliary field algorithms. The problem of convergence to unphysical fixed points, which hampers so-called bold-line methods, is not encountered in inchworm Monte Carlo.
Theoretical studies of electron and energy transport in nanostructures usually involve nonequilibrium quantum impurity models, which feature a locally interacting quantum system (impurity) coupled to noninteracting bosonic and/or electronic baths each at its own equilibrium. In these models, the interplay of strong correlation, nonequilibrium effects and dissipation leads to rich and complex phenomena. As a nonequilibrium strongly correlated many-body problem, these models, except at some rare cases, have no exact analytical solution, and hence their treatment heavily relies upon numerical techniques. The goal of this thesis is to develop numerically accurate and relatively low-cost techniques for treatment of strongly correlated open nonequilibirum quantum systems. Such impurity solvers are in high demand both as standalone methods for simulation of response in nanoscale junctions and as part of divide-and-conquer schemes such as dynamical mean field theory (DMFT).For nonequilibirum open quantum systems, two characteristic energy scales governing the physics are intra-system interactions and strength of the system-baths couplings. Thus, systems strongly coupled to their baths with weak intra-system interactions or weakly coupled systems with strong local interactions can be treated within developed perturbation theory approaches. My research focuses on development of nonequilibirum dual techniques, which are capable to accurately treat situations where perturbative techniques are inapplicable due to absence of a small parameter in the system and which reduce to standard perturbative expansions in the limits of weak coupling or weak intra-system interaction. \tDual techniques rely on ability to solve exactly a simplified reference system. The latter includes exactly all intra-system interactions and accounts approximately for system-bath couplings. Dual techniques (described below) allow to account for deviation from the correct hybridization function in a organized and controlled manner of superperturbative expansion. Here, I use Markovian Lindbald quantum master equation (QME) as a solver for the reference system. In the thesis I discuss possibility of mapping between true non-Markov dynamics and simpler Markov Lindblad QME (mapping between physical and reference systems), numerical methods for the mapping and for solution of the resulting Lindblad QME, and application of the mapping in novel dual formulations: auxiliary-QME dual fermion and dual boson approaches. \tFirst I analytically prove that the continuous fermionic baths that the impurity is coupled to can be mapped onto a set of dissipative auxiliary modes under Lindblad QME. Based on this mapping, complicated non-Markovian dynamics of the open fermionic system can be treated by a much simpler Markovian Lindblad QME. However, nice mapping generally requires many auxiliary modes, and numerically only a small number of modes can be exactly diagonalized due to exponential increase of the Hilbert space. To perturbatively treat the difference between the true bath and the small-size auxiliary one, we introduce dual-fermion method. It can directly target the steady state and avoid long-time propagation. Besides current-voltage relation, it can also provide spectral functions, indicating itself as a potential impurity solver for DMFT. Furthermore, we generalize dual-fermion method to consider additionally the effects of bosonic environment; hence it is called dual-boson method. It can be used for studying electron-phonon interaction and light-matter interaction in nanojunctions. By comparing with numerically exact results we argue that both methods are very accurate and relatively cheap. \tFinally, matrix product state representation of the Lindblad QME enables us to treat a large number of auxiliary modes, which provide an exponentially improved mapping. Adding counting field to the auxiliary QME, we can compute the generating function of time-dependent full-counting statistics of electron transport, which yields not only electronic current but also higher-order cumulants (e.g., zero-frequency noise).
We generalize a recently developed perturbation approach [F. M. Fern\'andez and E. A. Castro, Phys. Rev. A 46, 7288 (1992)], extending its applicability to a wider variety of separable quantum-mechanical problems. As an illustrative example, we consider a particle in a one-dimensional box with a finite potential wall perturbed by a linear potential and obtain the perturbation corrections to the wave function and energy of an arbitrary state in terms of the corresponding unperturbed quantities.
The earlier proposed method for exact determination of the energy spectra of Hamiltonians H and the quantities , where W is a finite-dimensional perturbation, is extended to treat a still larger class of Hamiltonians. In particular, some two- and three-dimensional problems became amenable to this approach. In addition, the expressions for the density and local densities of states are deduced. As an example, an impurity problem is considered in a simple cubic lattice with short-range and in a linear chain with long-range interactions.
In many cases, density-functional theory (DFT) with current standard approximate functionals offers a relatively accurate and computationally cheap description of the short-range dynamic electron correlation effects. However, in general, standard DFT does not treat the dispersion interaction effects adequately which, on the other hand, can be described by many-body perturbation theory (MBPT). It is therefore of interest to develop a hybrid model which combines the best of both the MBPT and DFT approaches. This can be achieved by splitting the two-electron interaction into long-range and short-range parts; the long-range part is then treated by MBPT and the short-range part by DFT. This work deals with the formulation of a general MBPT-DFT model (i.e., valid for any type of zeroth-order Hamiltonian) based on such a range separation. Applying the Rayleigh-Schr\"odinger formalism in this context, one finds that the generalized Bloch equation becomes self-consistent at each order of perturbation. This complication arises because the short-range part of the energy is a functional of the exact electron density, which is expanded in a perturbation series. In order to address this ``self-consistency problem'' and provide computable orbital-based expressions for any order of perturbation, a general one-electron reduced-density-matrix-based formalism is proposed. Two applications of our general formalism are presented: The derivation of a hybrid second-order M\o{}ller-Plesset-DFT model and the formulation of a range-separated optimized effective potential method based on a hybrid G\"orling-Levy-type MBPT-DFT model.