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The Journal of Chemical Physics

Efficient steady-state solver for hierarchical quantum master equations

Hou-Dao Zhang, Qin Qiao, Rui‐Xue Xu, Xiao Hong Zheng, YiJing Yan

Published Jul 26, 2017• 27 citations
Publisher

Abstract

Steady states play pivotal roles in many equilibrium and non-equilibrium open system studies. Their accurate evaluations call for exact theories with rigorous treatment of system-bath interactions. Therein, the hierarchical equations-of-motion (HEOM) formalism is a nonperturbative and non-Markovian quantum dissipation theory, which can faithfully describe the dissipative dynamics and nonlinear response of open systems. Nevertheless, solving the steady states of open quantum systems via HEOM is often a challenging task, due to the vast number of dynamical quantities involved. In this work, we propose a self-consistent iteration approach that quickly solves the HEOM steady states. We demonstrate its high efficiency with accurate and fast evaluations of low-temperature thermal equilibrium of a model Fenna-Matthews-Olson pigment-protein complex. Numerically exact evaluation of thermal equilibrium Rényi entropies and stationary emission line shapes is presented with detailed discussion.

DOI
10.1063/1.4995424

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Steady states play pivotal roles in many equilibrium and non-equilibrium open system studies. Their accurate evaluations call for exact theories with rigorous treatment of system-bath interactions. Therein, the hierarchical equations-of-motion (HEOM) formalism is a nonperturbative and non-Markovian quantum dissipation theory, which can faithfully describe the dissipative dynamics and nonlinear response of open systems. Nevertheless, solving the steady states of open quantum systems via HEOM is often a challenging task, due to the vast number of dynamical quantities involved. In this work, we propose a self-consistent iteration approach that quickly solves the HEOM steady states. We demonstrate its high efficiency with accurate and fast evaluations of low-temperature thermal equilibrium of a model Fenna-Matthews-Olson pigment-protein complex. Numerically exact evaluation of thermal equilibrium Rényi entropies and stationary emission line shapes is presented with detailed discussion.
An open quantum system refers to a system that is further coupled to a bath system consisting of surrounding radiation fields, atoms, molecules, or proteins. The bath system is typically modeled by an infinite number of harmonic oscillators. This system-bath model can describe the time-irreversible dynamics through which the system evolves toward a thermal equilibrium state at finite temperature. In nuclear magnetic resonance and atomic spectroscopy, dynamics can be studied easily by using simple quantum master equations under the assumption that the system-bath interaction is weak (perturbative approximation) and the bath fluctuations are very fast (Markovian approximation). However, such approximations cannot be applied in chemical physics and biochemical physics problems, where environmental materials are complex and strongly coupled with environments. The hierarchical equations of motion (HEOM) can describe the numerically "exact" dynamics of a reduced system under nonperturbative and non-Markovian system-bath interactions, which has been verified on the basis of exact analytical solutions (non-Markovian tests) with any desired numerical accuracy. The HEOM theory has been used to treat systems of practical interest, in particular, to account for various linear and nonlinear spectra in molecular and solid state materials, to evaluate charge and exciton transfer rates in biological systems, to simulate resonant tunneling and quantum ratchet processes in nanodevices, and to explore quantum entanglement states in quantum information theories. This article presents an overview of the HEOM theory, focusing on its theoretical background and applications, to help further the development of the study of open quantum dynamics.
Quantum computing offers promising new avenues for tackling the long-standing challenge of simulating the quantum dynamics of complex chemical systems, particularly open quantum systems coupled to external baths. However, simulating such nonunitary dynamics on quantum computers is challenging since quantum circuits are specifically designed to carry out unitary transformations. Furthermore, chemical systems are often strongly coupled to the surrounding environment, rendering the dynamics non-Markovian and beyond the scope of Markovian quantum master equations like Lindblad or Redfield. In this work, we introduce a quantum algorithm designed to simulate non-Markovian dynamics of open quantum systems. Our approach enables the implementation of arbitrary quantum master equations on noisy intermediate-scale quantum (NISQ) computers. We illustrate the method as applied in conjunction with the numerically exact hierarchical equations of motion (HEOM) method. The effectiveness of the resulting quantum HEOM algorithm is demonstrated as applied to simulations of the non-Lindbladian electronic energy and charge transfer dynamics in models of the carotenoid-porphyrin-C 60 molecular triad dissolved in tetrahydrofuran and the Fenna–Matthews–Olson complex.
Building upon our previous implementation for the hydrogen atom [Y. Zhang and Y. Tanimura, J. Chem. Phys. 163, 184108 (2025)], we have developed source code for atomic orbital-hierarchical equations of motion (AO-HEOM), a quantum mechanical framework based on HEOM formulated within an AO basis. This method enables numerically "exact" simulations of atomic systems coupled to three independent thermal baths, under both isotropic and anisotropic conditions, while preserving rotational symmetry. AO-HEOM rigorously accounts for system-bath entanglement, which is critical for describing the quantum nature of environmental interactions. Incorporating spatial bath degrees of freedom significantly increases the computational cost in the HEOM formalism because of the proliferation of electronic states at high temperatures and the inclusion of Matsubara frequency terms at low temperatures. To address this challenge, we developed a graphics processing unit-accelerated implementation. As a demonstration, we computed the emission spectra of He I and He II atoms. The source code is broadly applicable to atomic systems and enables detailed analysis of electronic transitions in thermal environments.
A nonperturbative quantum impurity solver is proposed based on a formally exact hierarchical equations of motion (HEOM) formalism for open quantum systems. It leads to quantitatively accurate evaluation of physical properties of strongly correlated electronic systems, in the framework of dynamical mean-field theory (DMFT). The HEOM method is also numerically convenient to achieve the same level of accuracy as that using the state-of-the-art numerical renormalization group impurity solver at finite temperatures. The practicality of the HEOM+DMFT method is demonstrated by its applications to the Hubbard models with Bethe and hypercubic lattice structures. We investigate the metal-insulator transition phenomena, and address the effects of temperature on the properties of strongly correlated lattice systems.
We develop a quantum-classical hierarchical equations of motion (QC-HEOM) approach for simulating non-Markovian open quantum systems. The method combines the ensemble-averaged classical path reference of the quantum-classical path integral formalism with a hierarchy of auxiliary quantum influence functionals. By incorporating thermal fluctuations through an ensemble average over reference trajectories, the hierarchy is required to represent only the residual quantum memory associated with the imaginary part of the bath response function. Consequently, unlike conventional hierarchical equations of motion, QC-HEOM does not require Matsubara or Padé expansions of the thermal kernel and exhibits only weak temperature dependence of the hierarchy size. Furthermore, because thermal fluctuations are supplied through reference classical trajectories, the framework naturally extends beyond harmonic baths and enables the incorporation of anharmonic and molecular environments through externally generated trajectories. We derive the formalism and demonstrate its exactness for a harmonic bath. Applications to an asymmetric spin-boson model and the seven-site Fenna--Matthews--Olson complex illustrate the accuracy of QC-HEOM. It reproduces benchmark quasi-adiabatic path integral and hierarchical equations of motion results while requiring substantially fewer auxiliary objects, particularly at low temperatures. These results establish QC-HEOM as an efficient framework for treating residual quantum memory in quantum-classical descriptions of open-system dynamics. The separation of thermal fluctuations from residual quantum memory through the use of Wigner trajectories provides an approximate route toward hierarchical treatments of complex anharmonic environments that are inaccessible to conventional HEOM approaches.
The accurate solution of dissipative quantum dynamics plays an important role in the simulation of open quantum systems. Here, we propose a machine learning-based universal solver for the hierarchical equations of motion, one of the most widely used approaches which takes into account non-Markovian effects and nonperturbative system-environment interactions in a numerically exact manner. We develop a neural quantum propagator model by utilizing the neural network architecture, which avoids time-consuming iterations and can be used to evolve any initial quantum state for arbitrarily long times. To demonstrate the efficacy of our model, we apply it to the simulation of population dynamics and linear and two-dimensional spectra of the Fenna-Matthews-Olson complex.