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Bulletin of the American Physical Society

Accelerating Quantum Monte Carlo via Graphics Processing Units

Benjamin Himberg, Adrian Del Maestro

Published Mar 5, 2018• 0 citations
OpenAlex

Abstract

An exact quantum Monte Carlo algorithm for interacting particles in the spatial continuum is extended to exploit the massive parallelism offered by graphics processing units. Its efficacy is tested on the Calogero-Sutherland model describing a system of bosons interacting in one spatial dimension via an inverse square law. Due to the long range nature of the interactions, this model has proved difficult to simulate via conventional path integral Monte Carlo methods running on conventional processors. Using Graphics Processing Units, optimal speedup factors of up to 640 times are obtained for N = 126 particles. The known results for the ground state energy are confirmed and, for the first time, the effects of thermal fluctuations at finite temperature are explored.

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An exact quantum Monte Carlo algorithm for interacting particles in the spatial continuum is extended to exploit the massive parallelism offered by graphics processing units. Its efficacy is tested on the Calogero-Sutherland model describing a system of bosons interacting in one spatial dimension via an inverse square law. Due to the long range nature of the interactions, this model has proved difficult to simulate via conventional path integral Monte Carlo methods running on conventional processors. Using Graphics Processing Units, optimal speedup factors of up to 640 times are obtained for N = 126 particles. The known results for the ground state energy are confirmed and, for the first time, the effects of thermal fluctuations at finite temperature are explored.
Any system in the world is comprised of particles like electrons. To analyze the behaviors of these systems the behavior of these particles must be predicted. The ground state energy of a molecule is important information about a molecule and can be calculated by solving the Schrodinger equation. As the number of atoms increase, the number of variables (coordinates of each atom) that the equation represents increases by three times. Due to the large state space and the nonlinear nature of the Schrodinger equation, it is very difficult to solve this equation. Quantum Monte Carlo (QMC) is a very efficient method to solve the Schrodinger equation for accurate results. This method uses random numbers to sample the complex equation and get very accurate results. Due to the large data involved in this method, it exhibits a rich amount of data parallelism. Variational path integral (VPI) simulations are a class of QMC methods that permit direct computation of expectation values of coordinate-space observables for the nodeless ground states of many-body quantum systems. The high degree of data parallelism involved in this method facilitates the use of Graphical Processing Units (GPUs), a powerful type of processor well known to computer gamers. In
We introduce a quantum Monte Carlo algorithm to measure the Rényi entanglement entropies in systems of interacting bosons in the continuum. This approach is based on a path-integral ground state method that can be applied to interacting itinerant bosons in any spatial dimension with direct relevance to experimental systems of quantum fluids. We demonstrate how it may be used to compute spatial mode entanglement, particle partitioned entanglement, and the entanglement of particles, providing insights into quantum correlations generated by fluctuations, indistinguishability, and interactions. We present proof-of-principle calculations and benchmark against an exactly soluble model of interacting bosons in one spatial dimension. As this algorithm retains the fundamental polynomial scaling of quantum Monte Carlo when applied to sign-problem-free models, future applications should allow for the study of entanglement entropy in large-scale many-body systems of interacting bosons.
This document aims to describe the methodology of quantum lattice gas algorithm based quantum physics simulations with details on implementation using graphics processing units. A variety of examples illustrating the general application of these methods are included. These examples are used to highlight topics such as scaling, potentials, momentums, multiple particle and dimensions, and various Hamiltonians in quantum simulations. Although intended to fullfill the doctor of philosophy degree requirement, this document is well suited as an introduction to this approach to modeling physics. In recent times parallelization has significantly improved the available computational power. Graphics processing units (GPUs) are a shining example of this, with thousands of compute cores and continually improved general computational capabilities, these processors can outshine their central processing unit (CPU) counterparts by orders of magnitude. Presented here are a number of examples of efficient computational methods for simulating physics using GPUs. Our quantum simulation method involves the quantum lattice gas model of quantum computation [59, 68, 64], however much of the parallel technology implementation is applicable to other numerical approaches. The quantum lattice gas model of computation is based on a unitary stream-collide quantum algorithm applied repeatedly over time upon an ordered array of qubits [53, 56, 68, 61, 63, 67]. The stream-collide quantum algorithm represents local quantum evolution of the system of quantum particles whose motion is constrained to reside on a spacetime lattice. Each particle in the system undergoes a quantum walk, interacting locally with other particles in the system that may reside on the same point. We will first mathematically describe the basic idea of quantum lattice gas algorithms. Next we will discuss GPUs and the basic features needed for implementation. We will then describe several examples of quantum lattice gas algorithm approach to illustrate the various applications and implementation challenges. Of particular interest is a look at modeling time-dependent many-body quantum mechanics using quantum lattice gas methods. For practical purposes we focus on the case of two fermions governed by the nonrelativistic Schrödinger equation. Numerical comparisons to analytic prediction show the high accuracy of these methods. Quantum lattice gas methods are chosen as a unitary algorithm for time dependent quantum simulation as they are efficient, accurate, and avoid the Fermi sign problem. Our findings from two-particle simulations under various conditions include the physics of the one and two particle systems diverging in their respective time-dependent behavior with increasing entanglement. We also confirm the multiple particle extension of the Ehrenfest theorem. Using the examples discussed throughout this document, we will then describe our specific computational implementation utilizing the computational power of GPUs through Nvidia’s compute unified device architecture (CUDA) language. Here we will discuss the open source software our group is developing based on these methods, along with some implementation verification and debugging concepts. Education is another application peripherally connected to this work and our software. The applications of this type of modeling as a learning tool is not fully explored yet, but the opportunities are promising.
Simulating long-range interacting systems is a challenging task due to its computational complexity that the computational effort for each local update is of order \mathcal{O}(N) 𝒪 ( N ) , where N N is the size of the system. In this work, we introduce the clock factorized quantum Monte Carlo method, an efficient technique for simulating long-range interacting quantum systems. The method is developed by generalizing the clock Monte Carlo method for classical systems [Phys. Rev. E 99 010105 (2019)] to the path-integral representation of long-range interacting quantum systems, with some specific treatments for quantum cases and a few significant technical improvements in general. We first explain how the clock factorized quantum Monte Carlo method is implemented to reduce the computational overhead from \mathcal{O}(N) 𝒪 ( N ) to \mathcal{O}(1) 𝒪 ( 1 ) . In particular, the core ingredients, including the concepts of bound probabilities and bound rejection events, the recursive sampling procedure, and the fast algorithms for sampling an extensive set of discrete and small probabilities, are elaborated. Next, we show how the clock factorized quantum Monte Carlo method can be flexibly implemented in various update strategies, like the Metropolis and worm-type algorithms. Finally, we demonstrate the high efficiency of the clock factorized quantum Monte Carlo algorithms using examples of three typical long-range interacting quantum systems, including the transverse field Ising model with long-range z z - z z interaction, the extended Bose-Hubbard model with long-range density-density interactions, and the XXZ Heisenberg model with long-range spin interactions. We expect that the clock factorized quantum Monte Carlo method would find broad applications in statistical and condensed-matter physics.
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.
We introduce methodologies for highly scalable quantum Monte Carlo simulations of electron-phonon models, and we report benchmark results for the Holstein model on the square lattice. The determinant quantum Monte Carlo (DQMC) method is a widely used tool for simulating simple electron-phonon models at finite temperatures, but it incurs a computational cost that scales cubically with system size. Alternatively, near-linear scaling with system size can be achieved with the hybrid Monte Carlo (HMC) method and an integral representation of the Fermion determinant. Here, we introduce a collection of methodologies that make such simulations even faster. To combat "stiffness" arising from the bosonic action, we review how Fourier acceleration can be combined with time-step splitting. To overcome phonon sampling barriers associated with strongly bound bipolaron formation, we design global Monte Carlo updates that approximately respect particle-hole symmetry. To accelerate the iterative linear solver, we introduce a preconditioner that becomes exact in the adiabatic limit of infinite atomic mass. Finally, we demonstrate how stochastic measurements can be accelerated using fast Fourier transforms. These methods are all complementary and, combined, may produce multiple orders of magnitude speedup, depending on model details.