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Journal of Physics A Mathematical and General

Simulation of excited states and the sign problem in the path integral Monte Carlo method

Alexander P. Lyubartsev

Published Jul 13, 2005• 40 citations
Publisher

Abstract

An approach is presented to compute properties of excited states in path integral Monte Carlo simulations of quantum systems. The approach is based on the introduction of several images of the studied system which have the total wavefunction antisymmetric over permutations of these images, and a simulation of the whole system at low enough temperature. The success of the approach relies, however, on the solution of the sign problem for the corresponding system. In the cases when the sign problem may be resolved (as for fermions in one dimension), properties of excited states can be computed with high precision. This was demonstrated by a simulation of excited states of a single particle in one- and two-dimensional harmonic oscillators. An example of the simulation of excited states of several interacting electrons in one dimension is also given.

DOI
10.1088/0305-4470/38/30/003

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An approach is presented to compute properties of excited states in path integral Monte Carlo simulations of quantum systems. The approach is based on the introduction of several images of the studied system which have the total wavefunction antisymmetric over permutations of these images, and a simulation of the whole system at low enough temperature. The success of the approach relies, however, on the solution of the sign problem for the corresponding system. In the cases when the sign problem may be resolved (as for fermions in one dimension), properties of excited states can be computed with high precision. This was demonstrated by a simulation of excited states of a single particle in one- and two-dimensional harmonic oscillators. An example of the simulation of excited states of several interacting electrons in one dimension is also given.
Path integral Monte Carlo simulations have been carried out for a system of interacting fermionic particles in one dimension. Due to the fact that the sign problem can be completely eliminated for one-dimensional systems, such simulations allow one to obtain accurate energies and particle densities in arbitrary external potentials. Two cases were considered: electrons in the field of a uniform neutralizing background and in an effective field of atoms on a lattice. In the latter case, a clear asymmetry of the charge density distribution of conducting electrons and holes has been observed.
In general, Quantum Monte Carlo methods suffer from a sign problem when simulating fermionic systems. This causes the efficiency of a simulation to decrease exponentially with the number of particles and inverse temperature. To circumvent this issue, a nodal constraint is often implemented, restricting the Monte Carlo procedure from sampling paths that cause the many-body density matrix to change sign. Unfortunately, this high-dimensional nodal surface is not a priori known unless the system is exactly solvable, resulting in uncontrolled errors. We will discuss two possible routes to extend the applicability of finite-temperatue path integral Monte Carlo. First we extend the regime where signful simulations are possible through a novel permutation sampling scheme. Afterwards, we discuss a method to variationally improve the nodal surface by minimizing a free energy during simulation. Applications of these methods will include both free and interacting electron gases, concluding with discussion concerning extension to inhomogeneous systems.
Expanded-ensemble Monte Carlo method with Wang-Landau algorithm was used for calculations of the ratio of partition functions for classes of permutations in the problem of several interacting quantum particles (fermions) in an external field. Simulations for systems consisting of 2 up to 7 interacting particles in harmonic or Coulombic field were performed. The presented approach allows one to carry out calculations for low enough temperatures that makes it possible to extract data for the ground-state energy and low-temperature thermodynamics.
This work shows that the recently discovered operator contraction identity for solving the discreet Path Integral of the harmonic oscillator can be applied equally to fermions in any dimension. This then yields an exactly solvable model for studying the sign problem where the Path Integral Monte Carlo energy at any time step for any number of fermions is known analytically, or can be computed numerically. It is found that the sign problem is primarily a property of the free fermion propagator, but repulsive/attractive pairwise interaction can shift the sign problem to larger/smaller imaginary time but does not make it more severe than the non-interacting case. More surprisingly, one can prove analytically that the first closed-shell state in DDD dimension, with n=D+1n=D+1n=D+1 fermion, has no sign problem at large imaginary time. Direct numerical simulations confirm that this is also true for higher closed-shell states in two and three-dimension. Fourth-order and newly found variable-bead algorithms are used to compute ground state energies of quantum dots with up to 110 electrons and compared to results obtained by modern neural networks.
This work shows that the recently discovered operator contraction identity for solving the discrete path integral of the harmonic oscillator can be applied equally to fermions in any dimension. This then yields an exactly solvable model for studying the sign problem where the path integral Monte Carlo energy at any time step for any number of fermions is known analytically or can be computed numerically. It is found that the sign problem is primarily a property of the free fermion propagator, but repulsive/attractive pairwise interactions can shift the sign problem to larger/smaller imaginary time but do not make it more severe than the non-interacting case. More surprisingly, one can prove analytically that the first closed-shell state in D dimension, with n = D + 1 fermions, has no sign problem at large imaginary time. Direct numerical simulations confirm that this is also true for higher closed-shell states in two and three dimensions. Fourth-order and newly found variable-bead algorithms are used to compute ground state energies of quantum dots with up to 110 electrons and are compared to results obtained by modern neural networks.
It is widely known that there is no sign problem in path integral Monte Carlo (PIMC) simulations of fermions in one dimension. As far as the author is aware, there is no direct proof of this in the literature. This work shows that the sign of the N-fermion antisymmetric free propagator is given by the product of all possible pairs of particle separations, or relative displacements. For a nonvanishing closed-loop product of such propagators, as required by PIMC, all relative displacements from adjacent propagators are paired into perfect squares, and therefore the loop product must be positive, but only in one dimension. By comparison, permutation sampling, which does not evaluate the determinant of the antisymmetric propagator exactly, remains plagued by a low-level sign problem, even in one dimension.