We present the algorithmic details of the dynamical cluster approximation (DCA), with a quantum Monte Carlo (QMC) method used to solve the effective cluster problem. The DCA is a fully causal approach which systematically restores nonlocal correlations to the dynamical mean field approximation (DMFA) while preserving the lattice symmetries. The DCA becomes exact for an infinite cluster size, while reducing to the DMFA for a cluster size of unity. We present a generalization of the Hirsch-Fye QMC algorithm for the solution of the embedded cluster problem. We use the two-dimensional Hubbard model to illustrate the performance of the DCA technique. At half filling, we show that the DCA drives the spurious finite-temperature antiferromagnetic transition found in the DMFA slowly towards zero temperature as the cluster size increases, in conformity with the Mermin-Wagner theorem. Moreover, we find that there is a finite-temperature metal to insulator transition which persists into the weak-coupling regime. This suggests that the magnetism of the model is Heisenberg-like for all nonzero interactions. Away from half filling, we find that the sign problem that arises in QMC simulations is significantly less severe in the context of DCA. Hence, we were able to obtain good statistics for small clusters. For these clusters, the DCA results show evidence of non-Fermi-liquid behavior and superconductivity near half filling.
The dynamical cluster approximation (DCA) is a systematic extension beyond the single-site approximation in dynamical mean field theory, to include spatially nonlocal correlations in quantum many-body simulations of strongly correlated systems. We extend the DCA with a continuous lattice self-energy in order to achieve better convergence with cluster size. This method, which we call DCA
+, cures the cluster-shape dependence problems of the DCA, without suffering from causality violations of previous attempts to interpolate the cluster self-energy. A practical approach based on standard inference techniques is given to deduce the continuous lattice self-energy from an interpolated cluster self-energy. We study the pseudogap region of a hole-doped two-dimensional Hubbard model and find that, in the DCA
+algorithm, the self-energy and pseudogap temperature
T∗ converge monotonously with cluster size. Introduction of a continuous lattice self-energy eliminates artificial long-range correlations and thus significantly reduces the sign problem of the quantum Monte Carlo cluster solver in the DCA
+algorithm compared to the normal DCA. Simulations with much larger cluster sizes thus become feasible, which, along with the improved convergence in cluster size, raises hope that precise extrapolations to the exact infinite cluster size limit can be reached for other physical quantities as well.