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Mitigating Green's function Monte Carlo signal-to-noise problems using contour deformations

Gurtej Kanwar

Published Jun 12, 2023• 0 citations
OpenAlex

Abstract

The Green's function Monte Carlo (GFMC) method provides accurate solutions to the nuclear many-body problem and predicts properties of light nuclei starting from realistic two- and three-body interactions. Controlling the GFMC fermion-sign problem is crucial, as the signal-to-noise ratio decreases exponentially with Euclidean time, requiring significant computing resources. Inspired by similar scenarios in lattice quantum field theory and spin systems, in this work, we employ integration contour deformations to improve the GFMC signal-to-noise ratio. Machine learning techniques are used to select optimal contours with minimal variance from parameterized families of deformations. As a proof of principle, we consider the deuteron binding energies and Euclidean density response functions. We only observe mild signal-to-noise improvement for the binding energy case. On the other hand, we achieve an order of magnitude reduction of the variance for Euclidean density response functions, paving the way for computing electron- and neutrino-nucleus cross-sections of larger nuclei.

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The Green's function Monte Carlo (GFMC) method provides accurate solutions to the nuclear many-body problem and predicts properties of light nuclei starting from realistic two- and three-body interactions. Controlling the GFMC fermion-sign problem is crucial, as the signal-to-noise ratio decreases exponentially with Euclidean time, requiring significant computing resources. Inspired by similar scenarios in lattice quantum field theory and spin systems, in this work, we employ integration contour deformations to improve the GFMC signal-to-noise ratio. Machine learning techniques are used to select optimal contours with minimal variance from parameterized families of deformations. As a proof of principle, we consider the deuteron binding energies and Euclidean density response functions. We only observe mild signal-to-noise improvement for the binding energy case. On the other hand, we achieve an order of magnitude reduction of the variance for Euclidean density response functions, paving the way for computing electron- and neutrino-nucleus cross-sections of larger nuclei.
We present a hybrid quantum-classical Green's function Monte Carlo (GFMC) algorithm for estimating the excited states of the nuclear shell model. The conventional GFMC method, widely used to find the ground state of a quantum many-body system, is plagued by the sign problem, which leads to an exponentially increasing variance with the growth of system size and evolution time. This issue is typically mitigated by applying classical constraints but at the cost of introducing bias. Our approach uses quantum subspace diagonalization (QSD) on a quantum computer to prepare a quantum trial state, replacing the classical trial state in the GFMC process. We also incorporated a modified classical shadow technique in the implementation of QSD to optimize quantum resource utilization. Besides, we extend our hybrid GFMC algorithm to find the excited states of a given quantum system. Numerical results suggest our method largely enhances accuracy in determining excited state energies, offering an improvement over the conventional method.
We present a hybrid quantum-classical Green's function Monte Carlo (GFMC) algorithm for estimating the excited states of the nuclear shell model. The conventional GFMC method, widely used to find the ground state of a quantum many-body system, is plagued by the sign problem, which leads to an exponentially increasing variance with the growth of system size and evolution time. This issue is typically mitigated by applying classical constraints but at the cost of introducing bias. Our approach uses quantum subspace diagonalization (QSD) on a quantum computer to prepare a quantum trial state, replacing the classical trial state in the GFMC process. We also incorporated a modified classical shadow technique in the implementation of QSD to optimize quantum resource utilization. Besides, we extend our hybrid GFMC algorithm to find the excited states of a given quantum system. Numerical results suggest our method largely enhances accuracy in determining excited-state energies, offering an improvement over the conventional method.
Restricted Boltzmann machine (RBM) has been proposed as a powerful variational ansatz to represent the ground state of a given quantum many-body system. On the other hand, as a shallow neural network, it is found that the RBM is still hardly able to capture the characteristics of systems with large sizes or complicated interactions. In order to find a way out of the dilemma, here, we propose to adopt the Green’s function Monte Carlo (GFMC) method for which the RBM is used as a guiding wave function. To demonstrate the implementation and effectiveness of the proposal, we have applied the proposal to study the frustrated J 1–J 2 Heisenberg model on a square lattice, which is considered as a typical model with sign problem for quantum Monte Carlo simulations. The calculation results demonstrate that the GFMC method can significantly further reduce the relative error of the ground-state energy on the basis of the RBM variational results. This encourages to combine the GFMC method with other neural networks like convolutional neural networks for dealing with more models with sign problem in the future.
The tensor network algorithm, a family of prevalent numerical methods for quantum many-body problems, aptly captures the entanglement properties intrinsic to quantum systems, enabling precise representation of quantum states. However, its computational cost is notably high, particularly in calculating physical observables like correlation functions. To surmount the computational challenge and enhance efficiency, we propose integrating the Green's function Monte Carlo (GFMC) method with the projected entangled pair state (PEPS) ansatz. This approach combines the high-efficiency characteristics of Monte Carlo with the sign-free nature of tensor network states and proves effective in addressing the computational bottleneck. To showcase its prowess, we apply this hybrid approach to investigate the antiferromagnetic ${J}_{1}\text{\ensuremath{-}}{J}_{2}$ Heisenberg model on the square lattice, a model notorious for its sign problem in quantum Monte Carlo simulations. Our results reveal a substantial improvement in the accuracy of ground-state energy when utilizing a preliminary PEPS as the guiding wave function for GFMC. By calculating the structure factor and spin-spin correlation functions, we further characterize the phase diagram, identifying a possible columnar valence-bond state phase within the intermediate parameter range of 0.52<J2/J1<0.580.52<{J}_{2}/{J}_{1}<0.580.52<J2​/J1​<0.58. This comprehensive study underscores the efficacy of our combined approach, demonstrating its ability to accurately simulate frustrated quantum spin systems while ensuring computational efficiency.
Finding high-quality trial wave functions for quantum Monte Carlo calculations of light nuclei requires a strong intuition for modeling the interparticle correlations as well as large computational resources for exploring the space of variational parameters. Moreover, for systems with three-body interactions, the wave function should account for many-body effects beyond simple pairwise correlations. In this Letter, we design neural networks that efficiently incorporate these factors to generate expressive wave function Ansätze for light nuclei using variational Monte Carlo. Our neural-network approach for A=3 nuclei can capture, already at the level of variational Monte Carlo, the overwhelming majority of the ground-state energy estimated by Green's function Monte Carlo (GFMC). It achieves a ground-state energy within 0.45% of the GFMC result for ^{3}H using the softest chiral interaction, representing a substantial improvement over standard variational Monte Carlo, which exhibits a 3.7% deviation. The result indicates the potential of neural networks to construct effective trial wave functions for quantum Monte Carlo calculations.
The Green’s function Monte Carlo method used for obtaining exact solutions to the Schrödinger equation of boson systems is generalized to treat systems of several fermions. We show that when it is possible to select eigenfunctions of the Hamiltonian based on physical symmetries, the GFMC method can be used to yield the lowest energy state of that symmetry. In particular, the lowest totally antisymmetric eigenfunction, the fermion ground state, can be obtained. Calculations on several two- and three-body model problems show the method to be computationally feasible for few-body systems.