In this thesis we investigated, implemented, gauged, optimized, and applied a numerical approach given by the dynamic density-matrix renormalization (D-DMRG). The dynamic density-matrix renormalization is the extension of standard DMRG to the calculation of dynamic quantities. D-DMRG provides valuable numerical information on dynamic correlations by computing convolutions of the corresponding spectral densities. The dynamics at zero temperature is determined by computing the expectation values in the local propagator. This can be realized by targeting not only at the ground state and the excited state, but also at the resolvent applied to the excited state. This additional targeted state is called the correction vector. The calculation of the frequency-dependent correction vector is numerically extremely demanding due to the inversion of an almost singular non-hermitian matrix. We compared the performance of several iterative solvers for linear equation systems and managed to stabilize the inversion problem of the D-DMRG by using optimized algorithms. The main limitation of the correction vector D-DMRG is that one cannot obtain data for purely real frequencies but only for frequencies with a certain imaginary part. Hence the extraction of the behavior at purely real frequencies is one of the main problems to be solved in using the D-DMRG. We illustrated how and to which extent such data can be deconvolved to retrieve the wanted spectral densities. We discussed and compared various algorithms to achieve this extraction and presented a non-linear approach from the family of maximum entropy methods. This approach provides a continuous, positive ansatz for the wanted spectral density with the least bias (LB). Even relative abrupt changes of the spectral density can be reproduced satisfactorily. In the vicinity of singularities spurious oscillations occur. The least-bias ansatz can be made more robust towards small numerical inaccuracies and finite-size effects by including besides the entropy functional a xi-functional in the functional to be minimized. We investigated the dynamic propagator of the symmetric single impurity Anderson model by D-DMRG. The Abrikosov-Suhl resonance (ASR) was calculated to gauge the D-DMRG and to demonstrate that features at low energies can be resolved. The low energy scale of the SIAM was reproduced over two orders of magnitude. The Hubbard satellites were investigated. From the broadened D-DMRG raw data we extracted the width and the shifts from the atomic positions. By means of the LB extraction we were able to address the line shape of the satellites. It was found that the Hubbard satellites are strongly asymmetric, the peak is very pronounced and the maximum value is very high. The Hubbard model on the Bethe lattice with infinite coordination number was investigated by means of the dynamic mean-field theory (DMFT) using the D-DMRG as impurity solver. A high-resolution investigation of the electron spectra close to the metal-to-insulator transition in dynamic mean-field theory was presented. The all-numerical, consistent confirmation of a smooth transition at zero temperature is provided.
In this thesis we investigated, implemented, gauged, optimized, and applied a numerical approach given by the dynamic density-matrix renormalization (D-DMRG). The dynamic density-matrix renormalization is the extension of standard DMRG to the calculation of dynamic quantities. D-DMRG provides valuable numerical information on dynamic correlations by computing convolutions of the corresponding spectral densities. The dynamics at zero temperature is determined by computing the expectation values in the local propagator. This can be realized by targeting not only at the ground state and the excited state, but also at the resolvent applied to the excited state. This additional targeted state is called the correction vector. The calculation of the frequency-dependent correction vector is numerically extremely demanding due to the inversion of an almost singular non-hermitian matrix. We compared the performance of several iterative solvers for linear equation systems and managed to stabilize the inversion problem of the D-DMRG by using optimized algorithms. The main limitation of the correction vector D-DMRG is that one cannot obtain data for purely real frequencies but only for frequencies with a certain imaginary part. Hence the extraction of the behavior at purely real frequencies is one of the main problems to be solved in using the D-DMRG. We illustrated how and to which extent such data can be deconvolved to retrieve the wanted spectral densities. We discussed and compared various algorithms to achieve this extraction and presented a non-linear approach from the family of maximum entropy methods. This approach provides a continuous, positive ansatz for the wanted spectral density with the least bias (LB). Even relative abrupt changes of the spectral density can be reproduced satisfactorily. In the vicinity of singularities spurious oscillations occur. The least-bias ansatz can be made more robust towards small numerical inaccuracies and finite-size effects by including besides the entropy functional a xi-functional in the functional to be minimized. We investigated the dynamic propagator of the symmetric single impurity Anderson model by D-DMRG. The Abrikosov-Suhl resonance (ASR) was calculated to gauge the D-DMRG and to demonstrate that features at low energies can be resolved. The low energy scale of the SIAM was reproduced over two orders of magnitude. The Hubbard satellites were investigated. From the broadened D-DMRG raw data we extracted the width and the shifts from the atomic positions. By means of the LB extraction we were able to address the line shape of the satellites. It was found that the Hubbard satellites are strongly asymmetric, the peak is very pronounced and the maximum value is very high. The Hubbard model on the Bethe lattice with infinite coordination number was investigated by means of the dynamic mean-field theory (DMFT) using the D-DMRG as impurity solver. A high-resolution investigation of the electron spectra close to the metal-to-insulator transition in dynamic mean-field theory was presented. The all-numerical, consistent confirmation of a smooth transition at zero temperature is provided.
A dynamic density-matrix renormalization group approach to the spectral properties of quantum impurity problems is presented. The method is demonstrated on the spectral density of the flat-band symmetric single-impurity Anderson model. We show that this approach provides the impurity spectral density for all frequencies and coupling strengths. In particular, Hubbard satellites at high energy can be obtained with a good resolution. The main difficulties are the necessary discretization of the host band hybridized with the impurity and the resolution of sharp spectral features such as the Abrikosov–Suhl resonance.
This thesis is concerned with two main topics: first, the advancement of the density matrix renormalization group (DMRG) and, second, its applications. In the first project of this thesis we exploit the common mathematical structure of the numerical renormalization group and the DMRG, namely, matrix product states (MPS), to implement an efficient numerical treatment of a two-lead, multi-level Anderson impurity model. By adopting a star-like geometry, where each species (spin and lead) of conduction electrons is described by its own so-called Wilson chain, instead of a single Wilson chain we achieve a very significant reduction in the numerical resources required to obtain reliable results. Moreover, we show that it is possible to find an "optimal" chain basis, in which chain degrees of freedom of different Wilson chains become effectively decoupled from each other further out on the Wilson chains. This basis turns out to also diagonalize the model's chain-to-chain scattering matrix. In the second project we show that Chebychev expansions offer numerically efficient representations for calculating spectral functions of one-dimensional lattice models using MPS methods. The main features of this Chebychev matrix product state (CheMPS) approach are: (i) it achieves uniform resolution over the spectral function's entire spectral width; (ii) it offers a well-controlled broadening scheme; (iii) it is based on using MPS tools to recursively calculate a succession of Chebychev vectors, (iv) whose entanglement entropies were found to remain bounded with increasing recursion order for all cases analyzed here. We present CheMPS results for the structure factor of spin-1/2 antiferromagnetic Heisenberg chains and perform a detailed finite-size analysis. Making comparisons to benchmark methods, we find that CheMPS yields results comparable in quality to those of correction vector DMRG, at dramatically reduced numerical cost and agrees well with Bethe Ansatz results for an infinite system, within the limitations expected for numerics on finite systems. Following these technologically focused projects we study the so-called Kondo cloud by means of the DMRG in the third project. The Kondo cloud describes the effect of spatially extended spin-spin correlations of a magnetic moment and the conduction electrons which screen the magnetic moment through the Kondo effect at low temperatures. We focus on the question whether the Kondo screening length, typically assumed to be proportional to the inverse Kondo temperature, can be extracted from the spin-spin correlations. We investigate how perturbations which destroy the Kondo effect, like an applied gate potential or a magnetic field, affect the formation of the screening cloud. In a forth project we address the impact of Quantum (anti-)Zeno physics resulting from repeated single-site resolved observations on the many-body dynamics. We use time-dependent DMRG to obtain the time evolution of the full many-body wave function that is then periodically projected in order to simulate realizations of stroboscopic measurements. For the example of a 1-D lattice of spin-polarized fermions with nearest-neighbor interactions, we find regimes for which many-particle configurations are stabilized and destabilized depending on the interaction strength and the time between observations.
This article focuses on the calculation of spectral functions for single- and multi-impurity models using the density matrix renormalization group (DMRG). To calculate spectral functions in DMRG, the correction vector method is presently the most widely used approach. One, however, always obtains Lorentzian convoluted spectral functions, which in applications like the dynamical mean-field theory can lead to wrong results. In order to overcome this restriction, we use chain decompositions in which the resulting effective Hamiltonian can be diagonalized completely to calculate a discrete ``peak'' spectrum. We show that this peak spectrum is a very good approximation to a deconvolution of the correction vector spectral function. Calculating this deconvoluted spectrum directly from the DMRG basis set and operators is the most natural approach, because it uses only information from the system itself. Having calculated this excitation spectrum, one can use an arbitrary broadening to obtain a smooth spectral function or directly analyze the excitations. As a nontrivial test, we apply this method to obtain spectral functions for a model of three coupled Anderson impurities. Although we are focusing in this article on impurity models, the proposed method for calculating the peak spectrum can be easily adapted to usual lattice models.
A density-matrix renormalization-group (DMRG) method for calculating dynamical properties and excited states in low-dimensional lattice quantum many-body systems is presented. The method is based on an exact variational principle for dynamical correlation functions and the excited states contributing to them. This dynamical DMRG is an alternate formulation of the correction vector DMRG but is both simpler and more accurate. The finite-size scaling of spectral functions is discussed and a method for analyzing the scaling of dense spectra is described. The key idea of the method is a size-dependent broadening of the spectrum. The dynamical DMRG and the finite-size scaling analysis are demonstrated on the optical conductivity of the one-dimensional Peierls-Hubbard model. Comparisons with analytical results show that the spectral functions of infinite systems can be reproduced almost exactly with these techniques. The optical conductivity of the Mott-Peierls insulator is investigated and it is shown that its spectrum is qualitatively different from the simple spectra observed in Peierls (band) insulators and one-dimensional Mott-Hubbard insulators.
The focus of this thesis is set on the calculation of spectral functions for low-dimensional quantum systems. At first the quantum many-body problem is introduced and the related spectral functions of interest are defined. In a next step the applied numerical algorithms are presented: Exact diagonalization & Lanczos algorithm, the numerical renormalization group (NRG) and the density matrix renormalization group (DMRG) in the formulation of matrix product states (MPS). The main focus is set on the calculation of spectral functions with these algorithms. In particular for the DMRG a new algorithm is presented which combines the Lanczos algorithm with matrix product states. The presented algorithms are applied to different problems. The first system denotes a copper crystal with magnetic (cobalt/iron) impurities. These materials are known Kondo-systems, i.e. they show an untypical increase in the resistivity with decreasing temperature. At low temperatures local moments will develop, which will be screened from the surrounding conduction band electrons. The ground state of the system is a long-range strongly correlated many-body state between conduction band electrons and local moments. In the singleparticle impurity spectral function a so-called Kondo resonance at the Fermi energy is formed below the Kondo temperature. In scanning tunneling microscope measurements the spectral function at the surface - the so-called local density of states - of the copper crystals with buried impurities in varying depth was measured. The goal of this study is to verify the existence of long-range Kondo signatures via a comparison of the spectral functions for impurities with different depth below the surface. Therefore in this work numerical simulations are used to calculate the local density of states at the surface. The single impurity Anderson model (SIAM) is applied which shows the Kondo resonance in the impurity spectral function. In order to calculate the local density of states at the surface of the copper crystal the equations of motion of the SIAM and the Dyson equation are used and then solved by a combination of numerical renormalization group and band structure calculations of the copper crystal (linear combination of atomic orbitals). The simulation for impurities in different depth below the surface and the experimental data are in very good agreement and hence support the measurement of a long-range Kondo signature. Furthermore the simulations allow to determine the Kondo temperature of a single impurity. The focus of the second part is set on the one-dimensional Heisenberg model. The spectral function of interest is here the dynamic spin structure factor. The newly developed MPS-Lanczos algorithm within the DMRG is used to calculate the dynamic spin structure factor. The results are compared to analytic results from the Bethe ansatz. In the end the new algorithm is discussed in respect to existing methods within the DMRG to calculate spectral functions.
Numerical studies on strongly correlated fermionic systems are very complicated and still provide essential problems. The main reason is the exponential growth of the un- derlying Hilbert state space with the system size and the fermionic sign problem for Monte Carlo studies. Among the most widely employed numerical techniques for study- ing two-dimensional quantum many-body systems are cluster extensions of the dynamical mean-field theory (DMFT), e.g. dynamical cluster approximation (DCA). They map an infinitely large multi-dimensional lattice problem to a one-dimensional impurity problem. In 2015 it was shown that the density matrix renormalisation group (DMRG) used as an impurity solver for DMFT (DMFT+DMRG) on the imaginary-frequency axis allows to solve multi-site and multi-band problems extremely fast compared to other solvers. Within this thesis, we further develop this DMRG+DMFT approach to apply the method on real material settings. The step from artificial, completely degenerate multi-band mod- els with simple dispersion relations on a Bethe lattice, studied in 2015, to systems with realistic band structures and lifted degeneracies involves more challenges than originally suspected. In this thesis, we will first recapitulate relevant methods for our approach like matrix prod- uct states, the density matrix renormalisation group and several time evolution methods. In this context we will present several improvements ranging from optimised time evo- lutions to entanglement based optimisations of tensor networks. Second, we will present a very detailed description of the dynamical mean field theory. We will focus on both methodological aspects and implementation details. This chapter is intended to allow other researcher to implement their own DMFT code using DMRG as an impurity solver. Third, we will discuss three different models to show the extent of problems DMRG+ DMFT is able to solve. We will focus on multi-site DCA calculations in the case of the two-dimensional Hubbard model and show that DMRG allows to tackle systems with intermediate interaction strengths at low temperatures, which are unsolvable with other solvers. In the second case, the real material Sr2VO4, we will show the first two-site DCA results for a realistic three-band model. In contrast to assumptions, partly reintroducing the momentum dependence of the self-energy does not improve agreement between exper- imental observations and theoretical results. Finally, we will move on to another realistic three-band model, which describes Sr2RuO4, to show how to deal with the influence of spin-orbit coupling on DMFT. We will present the first low-temperature results for this material and will confirm previous results of simplified model calculations.