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Finite-temperature dynamics of low-dimensional quantum systems with DMRG methods

Alexander C. Tiegel

Published Jan 1, 2016• 1 citation
Publisher

Abstract

This thesis is concerned with the numerical study of one-dimensional (1D) spin-1/2 quantum magnets and related method development. Its focus is on the calculation of dynamical spin correlation functions both at zero and finite temperature. This is motivated by the accessibility of dynamical quantities in experiments such as inelastic neutron scattering (INS) and electron spin resonance (ESR). The numerical methods used in this thesis are based on extensions of the density-matrix renormalization group (DMRG) and are formulated in the framework of matrix product states (MPS). While zero-temperature dynamical correlation functions are computed with existing MPS frequency-domain methods, an MPS frequency-domain approach for their calculation at finite temperature is developed in this thesis. The new method combines the Liouville-space formulation of the dynamics with a moment expansion of the dynamical correlation function. The majority of the results are obtained via MPS-based Chebyshev expansions. These numerical techniques are applied to two different model systems describing real materials. The first one is the material copper pyrimidine dinitrate (Cu-PM) which is modeled by a 1D spin-1/2 Heisenberg antiferromagnet with Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya interactions. The spin dynamics of this model is studied in an applied magnetic field and compared to ESR experiments. Zero-temperature calculations for momentum- and frequency-resolved dynamical quantities give direct access to the intensity of the elementary excitations and go beyond the low-energy description by the quantum sine-Gordon model. Thus, a deviation from the Lorentz invariant dispersion for the single-soliton resonance is found. The presence of the strongest boundary bound state previously predicted from a boundary sine-Gordon field theory is confirmed, while composite boundary-bulk excitations have too low intensities to be found in the numerical results. At finite temperature, there is a temperature-induced crossover of the soliton. Moreover, additional temperature effects such as interbreather transitions emerge, which is confirmed by accompanying ESR experiments on Cu-PM over a wide range of the applied field strength. The second system studied in this thesis is the compound BaCu$_2$V$_2$O$_8$. It is shown that the magnetic properties of this quasi-1D material can be described by a strongly alternating antiferromagnetic-ferromagnetic spin-1/2 Heisenberg chain. As found for other dimerized systems, the strong correlations in BaCu$_2$V$_2$O$_8$ persist even at elevated temperatures. Moreover, these correlations lead to an asymmetric lineshape broadening of the magnetic excitations at finite temperature. Upon raising the temperature, an increasingly asymmetric lineshape is observed in high-resolution INS experiments for BaCu$_2$V$_2$O$_8$. In this thesis, the lineshape is calculated by the MPS finite-temperature method developed as a part of this work. Comparing these results to the INS data and the lineshape obtained by a diagrammatic approach, excellent agreement is found over a broad temperature range. This demonstrates that coherent quantum behavior persists at elevated temperatures in BaCu$_2$V$_2$O$_8$ and that it can be predicted quantitatively.

DOI
10.53846/goediss-5809

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The density matrix renormalization group (DMRG) is a numerical method for studying low dimensional strongly correlated models. The study of these models is one of the most active areas of condensed matter physics today and has been spurred not only by the discovery of high temperature superconductivity but also by experiments on new compounds. In this thesis we study fundamentals of the density matrix renormalization group method as well as applications of the method to Heisenberg spin chains. The introductory text is meant as a brief overview of the DMRG as well as Heisenberg spin systems and provides an introduction to the papers. In papers I and II we investigate the density matrix renormalization group with the aim to better understand the underlying structure of the method. We find that if the renormalization converges to a fixed point in the thermodynamic limit, the resulting basis states can be written as a matrix product form. We also show an explicit relation of the DMRG to variational calculations using the fact that the matrix product states can be rederived through a variational ansatz without any reference to the DMRG calculation. It is then shown how the matrix product states can be used to define a set of Bloch waves for describing elementary excitations of the Heisenberg spin-1 chain. The low lying energy spectrum is calculated. In papers III and IV we investigate the thermodynamics of impurities in a spin-1/2 chain. For this purpose we have shown that a recently developed transfer matrix DMRG method can be used to calculate impurity properties. Both impurity corrections to thermodynamic properties and local properties at finite temperature can be obtained. The method gives quicker and more accurate results than quantum Monte Carlo. The numerical results show good agreement with field theory calculations for a number of impurity configurations and the cross-over function for the magnetic susceptibility from high- to low-temperature behavior shows the expected data collapse. Our results also give quantitative predictions for experiments on doped spin-1/2 chains.
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.
We investigate weakly coupled spin-1/2 ladders in a magnetic field. The work is motivated by recent experiments on the compound (C5H12N)2CuBr4\mathrm{(C_5H_{12}N)_2CuBr_4}(C5​H12​N)2​CuBr4​ (BPCB). We use a combination of numerical and analytical methods, in particular the density matrix renormalization group (DMRG) technique, to explore the phase diagram and the excitation spectra of such a system. We give detailed results on the temperature dependence of the magnetization and the specific heat, and the magnetic field dependence of the nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) relaxation rate of single ladders. For coupled ladders, treating the weak interladder coupling within a mean field approach, we compute the transition temperature of triplet condensation and its corresponding antiferromagnetic order parameter. Existing experimental measurements are discussed and compared to our theoretical results. Furthermore we compute, using time dependent DMRG, the dynamical correlations of a single spin ladder. Our results allow to directly describe the inelastic neutron scattering cross section up to high energies. We focus on the evolution of the spectra with the magnetic field and compare their behavior for different couplings. The characteristic features of the spectra are interpreted using different analytical approaches such as the mapping onto a spin chain, a Luttinger liquid (LL) or onto a t-J model. For values of parameters for which such measurements exist, we compare our results to inelastic neutron scattering experiments on the compound BPCB and find excellent agreement. We make additional predictions for the high energy part of the spectrum that are potentially testable in future experiments.
This thesis is composed by three projects in which we investigate thermal effects in low dimensional quantum spin systems. Thanks to recent developments in DMRG/MPS techniques, it is possible to simulate for such systems the dynamics at finite temperature. This allows us in the first two parts to study the temperature dependence of the NMR spin-lattice relaxation rate and of the INS spectra. Numerical calculations are performed for a wide range of temperatures. This represents a bridge between analytical results available for very low and very high temperatures. Interesting deviations from bosonization results valid at low energy, are seen at temperatures comparable to the energy scale of the system. In the third part we study the temperature and magnetic field dependence of the Grüneisen parameter, a valuable quantity for the detection and investigation of quantum phase transitions. Using an effective theory valid close to criticality, we show deviations from the critical behavior.
In this thesis we investigate dynamical correlations of spin systems at finite temperature. Especially we focus on the anomalous decoherence effects found previously in experiments of several quantum magnets. We develop and apply a diagrammatic perturbative approach, which incorporates the hard-core bosonic nature of spin excitations. This allows for a computation of the leading low-temperature contributions to the spectral function. The Jordan-Wigner transformation is used to benchmark the approach against exact results of the XX-chain in a strong transverse field. To tackle also more complex problems and vertex corrections we combine the approach with effective models derived by continuous unitary transformations. We perform an in-depth analysis of the approach to assess its properties in the context of conserving approximations in the sense of Baym and Kadanoff. The key result of this thesis is the investigation of two quantum magnets: BaCu2V2O8 and Cu(NO3)2·2.5D2O. We show that the anomalous decoherence observed can be traced back to non-trivial scattering processes of the hard-core bosonic excitations. This indicates, that quantum coherence plays a significant rolein describing dynamical correlations, even at finite temperature. Finally we show, how additional interactions can be taken into account in the full diagrammatic approach, going beyond a mean-field decoupling.
In this thesis the quantum Monte Carlo loop algorithm is applied to study the properties of correlation functions in low-dimensional quantum antiferromagnets. Two different types of lattice models are investigated. The first system is the quantum critical XXZ chain. The second class of models emerges when coupling the square lattice Heisenberg model to phonons. In case of the quantum critical XXZ chain, the loop algorithm is used to compute the two-point spin and dimer correlation functions at low temperatures. Starting from the well-known asymptotic expressions from conformal field theory for the decay of the correlations, the crossover from the finite-temperature to the ground state behavior is investigated. In addtion, the Monte Carlo data are used to extract numerical estimates for the correlation amplitudes. The deviations from asymptotic scaling at low finite temperatures and intermediate distances are examined. The results are also used to study the algebraic and logarithmic corrections in the ground state. The method is further applied to compute the low-temperature spin correlations of the square lattice Heisenberg model coupled to dispersionless Einstein phonons. Also, statically dimerized Heisenberg models in two dimensions are investigated. Here the quantum Monte Carlo technique is used to determine the specific pattern of dimerized bonds which has the largest gain in the magnetic energy. A direct comparison of ground state energies is only possible for a small number of dimerized systems. For this reason an alternative approach is developed, which allows to study a significantly larger class of models. Starting from a Landau expansion of the free energy, this amounts to a computation of specific structure factors of the dimer correlations of the uniform Heisenberg model. As a consequence, a Landau theory for the two-dimensional counterpart of the spin-Peierls transition is established. This adiabatic approach also applies to the Heisenberg model coupled to dispersive phonons. In this case the data for the dimer correlations are used to study the impact of the spin-phonon coupling on the phonon dispersion relations. In particular, the softening of phonon modes is investigated, which is relevant for experimental studies on substances with a quasi two-dimensional magnetic structure.