Challenges
Datasets
Workspaces
Papers
Discussions
Leaderboard
Log inSign up
Challenges
Datasets
Workspaces
Papers
Discussions
Leaderboard
Blog
Job Board
Q3AS

© 2026 Aqora Quantum S.A.S.

TermsPrivacyLegal Notice

Variational Simulation of Lattice Fermions with Neural Quantum States

Imelda Romero

Published Jan 1, 2025• 0 citations
Publisher

Abstract

Neural quantum states provide a flexible and scalable framework for strongly correlated systems. This thesis develops and benchmarks variational neural ansÀtze for fermionic lattice models, targeting ground states and low-lying excited states, with a particular focus on architectural performance. The constructions embed known structure such as fermionic antisymmetry, lattice translations, and total momentum while learning the remaining correlations efficiently in log amplitude. In the first part, we introduce a single dimensionless, intensive accuracy indicator, the V-score. Defined from the mean energy and energy variance of a state, it enables objective, method-agnostic comparisons across system sizes, interaction strengths, and even distinct momentum sectors, including regimes without exact references. We use it as a unifying measure of variational quality throughout the thesis. In the second part, we introduce a symmetry-aware Slaterâ Backflowâ Jastrow ansatz for spinless fermions in the t-V model. A convolutional backflow is built to be translation equivariant and consistent with particle exchange, allowing quantum-number projection to a fixed momentum without additional forward passes. This state is used to target ground states and momentum-resolved excitations, and to probe ordering tendencies via structure factors. In the third part, we develop a momentum-projected vision-transformer ansatz (DefeViT) for the one-hole t-J family. The state is factorized in a fixed-hole frame with a neural amplitude for the mobile defect, then restored to a chosen total momentum by summing lattice translations with the appropriate fermionic phase. On square lattices and their diagonal extensions (t'-J'), the approach captures ground-state properties and single-hole dispersions and tracks how spin correlators and hole-centered bond textures evolve under frustration. Within this setting, physics-informed neural states provide compact and accurate descriptions of ground states and low-lying excited states.

DOI
10.5075/epfl-thesis-11516

Related papers

Spectroscopy of two-dimensional interacting lattice electrons using symmetry-aware neural backflow transformations

Imelda Romero, Jannes Nys, Giuseppe Carleo

Neural networks have shown to be a powerful tool to represent the ground state of quantum many-body systems, including fermionic systems. However, efficiently integrating lattice symmetries into neural representations remains a significant challenge. In this work, we introduce a framework for embedding lattice symmetries in fermionic wavefunctions and demonstrate its ability to target both ground states and low-lying excitations. Using group-equivariant neural backflow transformations, we study the t-V model on a square lattice away from half-filling. Our symmetry-aware backflow significantly improves ground-state energies and yields accurate low-energy excitations for lattices up to 10 × 10. We also compute accurate two-point density-correlation functions and the structure factor to identify phase transitions and critical points. These findings introduce a symmetry-aware framework important for studying quantum materials and phase transitions. In this manuscript, the authors introduce a method for numerically modelling fermionic systems using a neural network wavefunction ansatz. They demonstrate that this method can efficiently and accurately find ground and low-lying excited states in two-dimensional models, outperforming existing approaches.

arXiv:2406.09077•Communications Physics•Jan 30, 2025•7 citations

Accurate neural quantum states for interacting lattice bosons

Zakari Denis, Giuseppe Carleo

In recent years, neural quantum states have emerged as a powerful variational approach, achieving state-of-the-art accuracy when representing the ground-state wave function of a great variety of quantum many-body systems, including spin lattices, interacting fermions or continuous-variable systems. However, accurate neural representations of the ground state of interacting bosons on a lattice have remained elusive. We introduce a neural backflow Jastrow Ansatz, in which occupation factors are dressed with translationally equivariant many-body features generated by a deep neural network. We show that this neural quantum state is able to faithfully represent the ground state of the 2D Bose-Hubbard Hamiltonian across all values of the interaction strength. We scale our simulations to lattices of dimension up to 20 × 20 while achieving the best variational energies reported for this model. This enables us to investigate the scaling of the entanglement entropy across the superfluid-to-Mott quantum phase transition, a quantity hard to extract with non-variational approaches.

arXiv:2404.07869•Quantum•Jun 17, 2025•12 citations

Pareto Frontier of Neural Quantum States: Scalable, Affordable, and Accurate Convolutional Backflow for Strongly Correlated Lattice Fermions

Yuntian Gu, Zeyao Han, Wenrui Li +5 more

The recent development of Neural Quantum States (NQS) has established them as one of the most accurate methods for studying strongly correlated many-fermion systems, outperforming existing many-body approaches for large systems. However, NQS calculations are currently highly resource intensive. In this work, we introduce an improved Pareto frontier of efficiency and accuracy for NQS in the simulation of strongly correlated lattice fermions. This frontier is defined by two complementary backflow-related architectures: the Sparse Convolutional Ansatz for Lattice Electrons (SCALE), which achieves high computational efficiency, and the Accurate Convolutional ansatz for lattice Electrons (ACE), which delivers high variational accuracy, based on benchmark results on the Hubbard model and the t – J model on large lattice sizes. SCALE utilizes a tailored convolutional design to enable an efficient local update based on the low-rank update of determinants. This structure reduces the computational scaling from O ( N 4 ) to O ( N 3 ) in backflow methods, resulting in a practical speedup exceeding 40 × in our test cases while retaining accurate variational accuracy. As an application, we study the 1 / 8 -doped pure Hubbard model up to size 32 × 32 and find no significant energy difference between the horizontal and vertical unit-filled stripe states, in contrast to the half-filled stripe state when next-nearest-neighbor hoppings are included. ACE, conversely, employs a deep convolutional stack to maximize expressive power, achieving high accuracy on large systems. We perform extensive benchmark calculations on the Hubbard and t – J models with the two architectures. On the challenging repulsive Hubbard model, SCALE achieves variational energies competitive with leading methods at a fraction of the computational cost. Meanwhile, ACE achieves lower variational energies than previously reported results while requiring only one-sixth of the run-time for system size 16 × 4 . These NQS approaches provide , , and tools for exploring the rich physics of strongly correlated fermionic systems.

arXiv:2604.25775•PRX Intelligence•Oct 6, 2026•0 citations

Phases of two-dimensional spinless lattice fermions with first-quantized deep neural-network quantum states

JAMES M. STOKES, Javier Robledo Moreno, Eftychios A. Pnevmatikakis +1 more

First-quantized deep neural network techniques are developed for analyzing strongly coupled fermionic systems on the lattice. Using a Slater-Jastrow-inspired ansatz which exploits deep residual networks with convolutional residual blocks, we approximately determine the ground state of spinless fermions on a square lattice with nearest-neighbor interactions. The flexibility of the neural-network ansatz results in a high level of accuracy when compared with exact diagonalization results on small systems, both for energy and correlation functions. On large systems, we obtain accurate estimates of the boundaries between metallic and charge-ordered phases as a function of the interaction strength and the particle density.

arXiv:2008.00118•Physical review. B./Physical review. B•Nov 20, 2020•54 citations

Static and dynamical properties of frustrated spin models

Francesco Ferrari

This thesis is devoted to the numerical investigation of quantum spin models which describe the low-energy physics of frustrated magnets. At extremely low temperatures, these systems can host the so-called spin liquid phase, an unconventional state of matter characterized by a high degree of quantum entanglement and the absence of magnetic order. The experimental identification of the spin liquid phase in actual materials relies on the detection of its distinctive excitations (named spinons), which possess fractional quantum numbers and can be probed by inelastic neutron scattering experiments. From the theoretical point of view, variational methods have been largely employed to tackle ground state properties of frustrated spin models. In particular, variational Monte Carlo techniques based on Gutzwiller-projected fermionic wave functions have been shown to provide accurate results for several frustrated systems. In this thesis, we pursue an extension of this variational scheme to target dynamical spectra, which are directly measured by inelastic neutron scattering experiments. Specifically, we compute the dynamical structure factor by constructing approximate excited states, which are obtained by applying two-spinon operators to the ground state wave function. Our results prove that this variational method can accurately describe the spectral features of different spin systems. Focusing on prototypical frustrated models on the square and triangular lattices, we observe how the dynamical structure factor reflects the phase transition between a magnetically ordered phase with spin wave excitations, to a spin liquid state with fractional degrees of freedom. In addition to spectral properties, we also explore new directions to improve the accuracy of Gutzwiller-projected states by the application of a neural network correlator, in the form of a restricted Boltzmann machine. While this hybrid variational scheme provides a considerable improvement of the variational energy in the case of unfrustrated spin models, less satisfactory results are obtained for frustrated systems, which call for further refinements of the neural network variational Ansätze.

•Oct 25, 2019•1 citation

Machine learning one-dimensional spinless trapped fermionic systems with neural-network quantum states

J. W. T. Keeble, M. Drissi, Abel Rojo-Francàs +2 more

We compute the ground-state properties of fully polarized, trapped, one-dimensional fermionic systems interacting through a Gaussian potential. We use an antisymmetric artificial neural network, or neural quantum state, as an Ansatz for the wave function and use machine learning techniques to variationally minimize the energy of systems from two to six particles. We provide extensive benchmarks for this toy model with other many-body methods, including exact diagonalization and the Hartree-Fock approximation. The neural quantum state provides the best energies across a wide range of interaction strengths. We find very different ground states depending on the sign of the interaction. In the nonperturbative repulsive regime, the system asymptotically reaches crystalline order. In contrast, the strongly attractive regime shows signs of bosonization. The neural quantum state continuously learns these different phases with an almost constant number of parameters and a very modest increase in computational time with the number of particles.

arXiv:2304.04725•Physical Review A•Dec 29, 2023•5 citations
Neural quantum states provide a flexible and scalable framework for strongly correlated systems. This thesis develops and benchmarks variational neural ansÀtze for fermionic lattice models, targeting ground states and low-lying excited states, with a particular focus on architectural performance. The constructions embed known structure such as fermionic antisymmetry, lattice translations, and total momentum while learning the remaining correlations efficiently in log amplitude. In the first part, we introduce a single dimensionless, intensive accuracy indicator, the V-score. Defined from the mean energy and energy variance of a state, it enables objective, method-agnostic comparisons across system sizes, interaction strengths, and even distinct momentum sectors, including regimes without exact references. We use it as a unifying measure of variational quality throughout the thesis. In the second part, we introduce a symmetry-aware Slaterâ Backflowâ Jastrow ansatz for spinless fermions in the t-V model. A convolutional backflow is built to be translation equivariant and consistent with particle exchange, allowing quantum-number projection to a fixed momentum without additional forward passes. This state is used to target ground states and momentum-resolved excitations, and to probe ordering tendencies via structure factors. In the third part, we develop a momentum-projected vision-transformer ansatz (DefeViT) for the one-hole t-J family. The state is factorized in a fixed-hole frame with a neural amplitude for the mobile defect, then restored to a chosen total momentum by summing lattice translations with the appropriate fermionic phase. On square lattices and their diagonal extensions (t'-J'), the approach captures ground-state properties and single-hole dispersions and tracks how spin correlators and hole-centered bond textures evolve under frustration. Within this setting, physics-informed neural states provide compact and accurate descriptions of ground states and low-lying excited states.
Neural networks have shown to be a powerful tool to represent the ground state of quantum many-body systems, including fermionic systems. However, efficiently integrating lattice symmetries into neural representations remains a significant challenge. In this work, we introduce a framework for embedding lattice symmetries in fermionic wavefunctions and demonstrate its ability to target both ground states and low-lying excitations. Using group-equivariant neural backflow transformations, we study the t-V model on a square lattice away from half-filling. Our symmetry-aware backflow significantly improves ground-state energies and yields accurate low-energy excitations for lattices up to 10 × 10. We also compute accurate two-point density-correlation functions and the structure factor to identify phase transitions and critical points. These findings introduce a symmetry-aware framework important for studying quantum materials and phase transitions. In this manuscript, the authors introduce a method for numerically modelling fermionic systems using a neural network wavefunction ansatz. They demonstrate that this method can efficiently and accurately find ground and low-lying excited states in two-dimensional models, outperforming existing approaches.
In recent years, neural quantum states have emerged as a powerful variational approach, achieving state-of-the-art accuracy when representing the ground-state wave function of a great variety of quantum many-body systems, including spin lattices, interacting fermions or continuous-variable systems. However, accurate neural representations of the ground state of interacting bosons on a lattice have remained elusive. We introduce a neural backflow Jastrow Ansatz, in which occupation factors are dressed with translationally equivariant many-body features generated by a deep neural network. We show that this neural quantum state is able to faithfully represent the ground state of the 2D Bose-Hubbard Hamiltonian across all values of the interaction strength. We scale our simulations to lattices of dimension up to 20 × 20 while achieving the best variational energies reported for this model. This enables us to investigate the scaling of the entanglement entropy across the superfluid-to-Mott quantum phase transition, a quantity hard to extract with non-variational approaches.
The recent development of Neural Quantum States (NQS) has established them as one of the most accurate methods for studying strongly correlated many-fermion systems, outperforming existing many-body approaches for large systems. However, NQS calculations are currently highly resource intensive. In this work, we introduce an improved Pareto frontier of efficiency and accuracy for NQS in the simulation of strongly correlated lattice fermions. This frontier is defined by two complementary backflow-related architectures: the Sparse Convolutional Ansatz for Lattice Electrons (SCALE), which achieves high computational efficiency, and the Accurate Convolutional ansatz for lattice Electrons (ACE), which delivers high variational accuracy, based on benchmark results on the Hubbard model and the t – J model on large lattice sizes. SCALE utilizes a tailored convolutional design to enable an efficient local update based on the low-rank update of determinants. This structure reduces the computational scaling from O ( N 4 ) to O ( N 3 ) in backflow methods, resulting in a practical speedup exceeding 40 × in our test cases while retaining accurate variational accuracy. As an application, we study the 1 / 8 -doped pure Hubbard model up to size 32 × 32 and find no significant energy difference between the horizontal and vertical unit-filled stripe states, in contrast to the half-filled stripe state when next-nearest-neighbor hoppings are included. ACE, conversely, employs a deep convolutional stack to maximize expressive power, achieving high accuracy on large systems. We perform extensive benchmark calculations on the Hubbard and t – J models with the two architectures. On the challenging repulsive Hubbard model, SCALE achieves variational energies competitive with leading methods at a fraction of the computational cost. Meanwhile, ACE achieves lower variational energies than previously reported results while requiring only one-sixth of the run-time for system size 16 × 4 . These NQS approaches provide , , and tools for exploring the rich physics of strongly correlated fermionic systems.
First-quantized deep neural network techniques are developed for analyzing strongly coupled fermionic systems on the lattice. Using a Slater-Jastrow-inspired ansatz which exploits deep residual networks with convolutional residual blocks, we approximately determine the ground state of spinless fermions on a square lattice with nearest-neighbor interactions. The flexibility of the neural-network ansatz results in a high level of accuracy when compared with exact diagonalization results on small systems, both for energy and correlation functions. On large systems, we obtain accurate estimates of the boundaries between metallic and charge-ordered phases as a function of the interaction strength and the particle density.
This thesis is devoted to the numerical investigation of quantum spin models which describe the low-energy physics of frustrated magnets. At extremely low temperatures, these systems can host the so-called spin liquid phase, an unconventional state of matter characterized by a high degree of quantum entanglement and the absence of magnetic order. The experimental identification of the spin liquid phase in actual materials relies on the detection of its distinctive excitations (named spinons), which possess fractional quantum numbers and can be probed by inelastic neutron scattering experiments. From the theoretical point of view, variational methods have been largely employed to tackle ground state properties of frustrated spin models. In particular, variational Monte Carlo techniques based on Gutzwiller-projected fermionic wave functions have been shown to provide accurate results for several frustrated systems. In this thesis, we pursue an extension of this variational scheme to target dynamical spectra, which are directly measured by inelastic neutron scattering experiments. Specifically, we compute the dynamical structure factor by constructing approximate excited states, which are obtained by applying two-spinon operators to the ground state wave function. Our results prove that this variational method can accurately describe the spectral features of different spin systems. Focusing on prototypical frustrated models on the square and triangular lattices, we observe how the dynamical structure factor reflects the phase transition between a magnetically ordered phase with spin wave excitations, to a spin liquid state with fractional degrees of freedom. In addition to spectral properties, we also explore new directions to improve the accuracy of Gutzwiller-projected states by the application of a neural network correlator, in the form of a restricted Boltzmann machine. While this hybrid variational scheme provides a considerable improvement of the variational energy in the case of unfrustrated spin models, less satisfactory results are obtained for frustrated systems, which call for further refinements of the neural network variational Ansätze.
We compute the ground-state properties of fully polarized, trapped, one-dimensional fermionic systems interacting through a Gaussian potential. We use an antisymmetric artificial neural network, or neural quantum state, as an Ansatz for the wave function and use machine learning techniques to variationally minimize the energy of systems from two to six particles. We provide extensive benchmarks for this toy model with other many-body methods, including exact diagonalization and the Hartree-Fock approximation. The neural quantum state provides the best energies across a wide range of interaction strengths. We find very different ground states depending on the sign of the interaction. In the nonperturbative repulsive regime, the system asymptotically reaches crystalline order. In contrast, the strongly attractive regime shows signs of bosonization. The neural quantum state continuously learns these different phases with an almost constant number of parameters and a very modest increase in computational time with the number of particles.