Geometry of the Time-Dependent Variational Principle in Quantum Mechanics

Peter Krämer, Marcos Saraceno

H.H. Rosenbrock

Caroline Lasser, Chunmei Su

We investigate variational principles for the approximation of quantum dynamics that apply for approximation manifolds that do not have complex linear tangent spaces. The first one, dating back to McLachlan [Mol. Phys. 8, 39–44 (1964)], minimizes the residuum of the time-dependent Schrödinger equation, while the second one, originating from the lecture notes of Kramer and Saraceno [Geometry of the Time-Dependent Variational Principle in Quantum Mechanics, Lecture Notes in Physics Vol. 140 (Springer, Berlin, 1981)], imposes the stationarity of an action functional. We characterize both principles in terms of metric and symplectic orthogonality conditions, consider their conservation properties, and derive an elementary a posteriori error estimate. As an application, we revisit the time-dependent Hartree approximation and frozen Gaussian wave packets.

Guy Rideau

Yantao Wu

We describe a time evolution algorithm for quantum spin chains whose Hamiltonians are composed of an infinite uniform left and right bulk part, and an arbitrary finite region in between. The left and right bulk parts are allowed to be different from each other. The algorithm is based on the time-dependent variational principle (TDVP) of matrix product states. It is inversion-free and very simple to adapt from an existing TDVP code for finite systems. The importance of working in the projective Hilbert space is highlighted. We study the quantum Ising model as a benchmark and an illustrative example. The spread of information after a local quench is studied in both the ballistic and the diffusive case. We also offer a derivation of TDVP directly from symplectic geometry.

Mingli Zhou