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Optimal Renormalization Group Transformation from Information Theory

Patrick M. Lenggenhager, Doruk Efe Gökmen, Zohar Ringel, Sebastian D. Huber, Maciej Koch-Janusz

Published Jan 1, 2020• 20 citations
Publisher

Abstract

Recently, a novel real-space renormalization group (RG) algorithm was introduced. By maximizing an information-theoretic quantity, the real-space mutual information, the algorithm identifies the relevant low-energy degrees of freedom. Motivated by this insight, we investigate the information-theoretic properties of coarse-graining procedures for both translationally invariant and disordered systems. We prove that a perfect real-space mutual information coarse graining does not increase the range of interactions in the renormalized Hamiltonian, and, for disordered systems, it suppresses the generation of correlations in the renormalized disorder distribution, being in this sense optimal. We empirically verify decay of those measures of complexity as a function of information retained by the RG, on the examples of arbitrary coarse grainings of the clean and random Ising chain. The results establish a direct and quantifiable connection between properties of RG viewed as a compression scheme and those of physical objects, i.e., Hamiltonians and disorder distributions. We also study the effect of constraints on the number and type of coarse-grained degrees of freedom on a generic RG procedure.

DOI
10.3929/ethz-b-000400030

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Recently, a novel real-space renormalization group (RG) algorithm was introduced. By maximizing an information-theoretic quantity, the real-space mutual information, the algorithm identifies the relevant low-energy degrees of freedom. Motivated by this insight, we investigate the information-theoretic properties of coarse-graining procedures for both translationally invariant and disordered systems. We prove that a perfect real-space mutual information coarse graining does not increase the range of interactions in the renormalized Hamiltonian, and, for disordered systems, it suppresses the generation of correlations in the renormalized disorder distribution, being in this sense optimal. We empirically verify decay of those measures of complexity as a function of information retained by the RG, on the examples of arbitrary coarse grainings of the clean and random Ising chain. The results establish a direct and quantifiable connection between properties of RG viewed as a compression scheme and those of physical objects, i.e., Hamiltonians and disorder distributions. We also study the effect of constraints on the number and type of coarse-grained degrees of freedom on a generic RG procedure.
Recently, a novel real-space renormalization group (RG) algorithm was introduced.By maximizing an information-theoretic quantity, the real-space mutual information, the algorithm identifies the relevant lowenergy degrees of freedom.Motivated by this insight, we investigate the information-theoretic properties of coarse-graining procedures for both translationally invariant and disordered systems.We prove that a perfect real-space mutual information coarse graining does not increase the range of interactions in the renormalized Hamiltonian, and, for disordered systems, it suppresses the generation of correlations in the renormalized disorder distribution, being in this sense optimal.We empirically verify decay of those measures of complexity as a function of information retained by the RG, on the examples of arbitrary coarse grainings of the clean and random Ising chain.The results establish a direct and quantifiable connection between properties of RG viewed as a compression scheme and those of physical objects, i.e., Hamiltonians and disorder distributions.We also study the effect of constraints on the number and type of coarse-grained degrees of freedom on a generic RG procedure.
Renormalization group (RG) is a core concept from statistical mechanics to quantum field theory, yet its schemes differ widely across literature. We formulate Wilsonian RG for generic, including finite-dimensional, quantum systems as a quantum channel combining coarse graining with isometric rescaling, whose Kraus representation yields pure conditional trajectories for pure inputs and recovers mixed-state flows upon averaging. We then develop an algebraic extension without assuming tensor-product factorization: the retained low-energy algebra is constructed from the one-particle spectrum, and coarse graining is a conditional expectation onto it. Identifying the channel's Cesàro mean with a resource-destroying map onto fixed states establishes a resource theory of RG and yields a relative-entropy monotone without variational optimization. For thermal states in the zero-temperature limit, the resulting Bogoliubov--Kubo--Mori metric per unit spacetime volume is proportional to the Zamolodchikov metric, directly relating the resource density to c−cIRc-c_{\rm IR}c−cIR​ near a two-dimensional IR fixed point. We also introduce the relative entropy of coarse graining to measure discarded UV information, prove its monotonicity along successive coarse grainings, and evaluate it holographically in global AdS3\mathrm{AdS}_3AdS3​.
Real-space mutual information (RSMI) was shown to be an important quantity, formally and from a numerical standpoint, in finding coarse-grained descriptions of physical systems. It very generally quantifies spatial correlations and can give rise to constructive algorithms extracting relevant degrees of freedom. Efficient and reliable estimation or maximization of RSMI is, however, numerically challenging. A recent breakthrough in theoretical machine learning has been the introduction of variational lower bounds for mutual information, parametrized by neural networks. Here we describe in detail how these results can be combined with differentiable coarse-graining operations to develop a single unsupervised neural-network-based algorithm, the RSMI-NE, efficiently extracting the relevant degrees of freedom in the form of the operators of effective field theories, directly from real-space configurations. We study the information contained in the statistical ensemble of constructed coarse-graining transformations and its recovery from partial input data using a secondary machine learning analysis applied to this ensemble. In particular, we show how symmetries, also emergent, can be identified. We demonstrate the extraction of the phase diagram and the order parameters for equilibrium systems and consider also an example of a nonequilibrium problem.
Real-space mutual information (RSMI) has been shown to be an important quantity, both formally and from numerical standpoint, in constructing coarse-grained descriptions of physical systems. It very generally quantifies spatial correlations, and can give rise to constructive algorithms extracting relevant degrees of freedom. Efficient and reliable estimation or maximization of RSMI is, however, numerically challenging. A recent breakthrough in theoretical machine learning has been the introduction of variational lower bounds for mutual information, parametrized by neural networks. Here we describe in detail how these results can be combined with differentiable coarse-graining operations to develop a single unsupervised neural-network based algorithm, the RSMI-NE, efficiently extracting the relevant degrees of freedom in the form of the operators of effective field theories, directly from real-space configurations. We study the information, e.g. about the symmetries, contained in the ensemble of constructed coarse-graining transformations, and its practical recovery from partial input data using a secondary machine learning analysis applied to this ensemble. We demonstrate how the phase diagram and the order parameters for equilibrium systems are extracted, and consider also an example of a non-equilibrium problem.
Given a renormalization scheme, we show how to formulate a tractable convex relaxation of the set of feasible local density matrices of a many-body quantum system. The relaxation is obtained by introducing a hierarchy of constraints between the reduced states of ever-growing sets of lattice sites. The coarse-graining maps of the underlying renormalization procedure serve to eliminate a vast number of those constraints, such that the remaining ones can be enforced with reasonable computational means. This process can be used to obtain rigorous lower bounds on the ground-state energy of arbitrary local Hamiltonians by performing a linear optimization over the resulting convex relaxation of reduced quantum states. The quality of the bounds crucially depends on the particular renormalization scheme, which must be tailored to the target Hamiltonian. We apply our method to 1D translation-invariant spin models, obtaining energy bounds comparable to those attained by optimizing over locally translation-invariant states of n≳100 spins. Beyond this demonstration, the general method can be applied to a wide range of other problems, such as spin systems in higher spatial dimensions, electronic structure problems, and various other many-body optimization problems, such as entanglement and nonlocality detection. Published by the American Physical Society 2024
At low energies, the microscopic characteristics and changes of physical systems as viewed at different distance scales are described by universal scale invariant properties investigated by the Renormalization Group (RG) apparatus, an efficient tool used to deal with scaling problems in effective field theories. We employ an information-theoretic approach in a deep learning setup by introducing an artificial neural network algorithm to map and identify new physical degrees of freedom. Using deep learning methods mapped to a genuine field theory, we develop a mechanism capable to identify relevant degrees of freedom and induce scale invariance without prior knowledge about a system. We show that deep learning algorithms that use an RG-like scheme to learn relevant features from data could help to understand the nature of the holographic entanglement entropy and the holographic principle in context of the AdS/CFT correspondence.