The main focus of the present thesis lies on the development and application of numerical approaches based on quantum lattice models to describe collective excitations in strongly correlated materials. To this end, an efficient and balanced dual triply irreducible local expansion (D-TRILEX) approach that captures the major effects of spatial correlations in strongly correlated fermionic systems is presented, which is based on partial bosonization of the collective electronic fluctuations. Thereby, a specific choice of the bare interaction in the corresponding channel of instability allows a simultaneous description of collective excitations in different channels without facing the Fierz ambiguity problem which usually arises in methods based on partial bosonization. Compared to more elaborate methods, D-TRILEX does not require the computation of the numerically expensive four-point vertex. Furthermore, taking into account only the leading longitudinal contribution of the bosonic modes to the self-energy reduces the complexity of the diagrammatic structure drastically making the method applicable to more complex realistic multi-orbital systems. As the main result of this thesis, the D-TRILEX approach is introduced and its limit of applicability is studied by applying it to the two-dimensional single-band Hubbard model. Performing a comprehensive diagrammatic analysis by comparing D-TRILEX with methods, which consider different sets of diagrams and different approximations for the four-point vertex, we find that contributions that are not considered by the partially bosonized approximation of the four-point vertex have only a minor effect on electronic degrees of freedom and the longitudinal bosonic modes taking into account in D-TRILEX self-energy are the leading ones in a broad range of control parameters. After investigating the applicability of the D-TRILEX approach we apply the method to study collective electronic effects in the hole-doped InSe monolayers using a realistic electronic-structure model. Thereby, we find that due to the weakly screened long-range Coulomb interaction the system shows a charge density waves phase for the broad range of considered parameters, however, inside this regime we have found a coexisting ferromagnetic phase. D-TRILEX can be considered as an approximation of the more elaborate dual boson (DB) theory, which accounts for local correlations within the dynamical mean-field theory (DMFT) and nonlocal correlations perturbatively. As a further result of this thesis, we investigate the weak coupling regime of the two-dimensional single-band Hubbard model within the ladder DB approximation and compare our results to the numerically exact diagrammatic quantum Monte Carlo (DiagMC) method. We find that the DB method qualitatively captures all the different regimes. Even quantitatively DB shows a good agreement with the exact results for single- and two-particle quantities at high and moderate temperatures. However, the ladder approximation slightly underestimates the strong antiferromagnetic fluctuations that appear in the system at low temperatures. As the final result of this thesis, we perform a parametrization of the local four-point vertex in terms of the (three-point) Hedin vertex and screened interactions in the framework of single-boson exchange (SBE) decomposition. Similar to the D-TRILEX approach the computational costs are reduced by neglecting the interaction-irreducible part of the four-point vertex. The approximated vertex is used to calculate the DMFT susceptibility for different interaction strengths at different temperatures. We find that the approximation shows a good agreement in the limits of weak and strong couplings. Thereby, our study highlights the importance of the Hedin vertex for local vertex corrections.
The main focus of the present thesis lies on the development and application of numerical approaches based on quantum lattice models to describe collective excitations in strongly correlated materials. To this end, an efficient and balanced dual triply irreducible local expansion (D-TRILEX) approach that captures the major effects of spatial correlations in strongly correlated fermionic systems is presented, which is based on partial bosonization of the collective electronic fluctuations. Thereby, a specific choice of the bare interaction in the corresponding channel of instability allows a simultaneous description of collective excitations in different channels without facing the Fierz ambiguity problem which usually arises in methods based on partial bosonization. Compared to more elaborate methods, D-TRILEX does not require the computation of the numerically expensive four-point vertex. Furthermore, taking into account only the leading longitudinal contribution of the bosonic modes to the self-energy reduces the complexity of the diagrammatic structure drastically making the method applicable to more complex realistic multi-orbital systems. As the main result of this thesis, the D-TRILEX approach is introduced and its limit of applicability is studied by applying it to the two-dimensional single-band Hubbard model. Performing a comprehensive diagrammatic analysis by comparing D-TRILEX with methods, which consider different sets of diagrams and different approximations for the four-point vertex, we find that contributions that are not considered by the partially bosonized approximation of the four-point vertex have only a minor effect on electronic degrees of freedom and the longitudinal bosonic modes taking into account in D-TRILEX self-energy are the leading ones in a broad range of control parameters. After investigating the applicability of the D-TRILEX approach we apply the method to study collective electronic effects in the hole-doped InSe monolayers using a realistic electronic-structure model. Thereby, we find that due to the weakly screened long-range Coulomb interaction the system shows a charge density waves phase for the broad range of considered parameters, however, inside this regime we have found a coexisting ferromagnetic phase. D-TRILEX can be considered as an approximation of the more elaborate dual boson (DB) theory, which accounts for local correlations within the dynamical mean-field theory (DMFT) and nonlocal correlations perturbatively. As a further result of this thesis, we investigate the weak coupling regime of the two-dimensional single-band Hubbard model within the ladder DB approximation and compare our results to the numerically exact diagrammatic quantum Monte Carlo (DiagMC) method. We find that the DB method qualitatively captures all the different regimes. Even quantitatively DB shows a good agreement with the exact results for single- and two-particle quantities at high and moderate temperatures. However, the ladder approximation slightly underestimates the strong antiferromagnetic fluctuations that appear in the system at low temperatures. As the final result of this thesis, we perform a parametrization of the local four-point vertex in terms of the (three-point) Hedin vertex and screened interactions in the framework of single-boson exchange (SBE) decomposition. Similar to the D-TRILEX approach the computational costs are reduced by neglecting the interaction-irreducible part of the four-point vertex. The approximated vertex is used to calculate the DMFT susceptibility for different interaction strengths at different temperatures. We find that the approximation shows a good agreement in the limits of weak and strong couplings. Thereby, our study highlights the importance of the Hedin vertex for local vertex corrections.
In strongly correlated materials, quantum fluctuations taking place at the level of atomic sites play a central role. These local processes are captured nonperturbatively in dynamical mean field theory (DMFT). Nonlocal mechanisms, however, are also suspected to be essential for the proper description of some of these materials, including the well-known high-temperature cuprate superconductors and the more exotic systems of atoms adsorbed on semiconducting surfaces.In this thesis, the effect of nonlocal, potentially long-range fluctuations beyond the DMFT framework is investigated from two angles.First, long-ranged interactions in adatom systems, computed from first principles within the constrained random-phase approximation (cRPA), are treated within the extended DMFT (EDMFT) framework and its combination with the diagrammatic GW method (GW +EDMFT). They are shown to explain some material trends observed in these compounds. In addition, thanks to the spatial and temporal information delivered by GW+EDMFT, they solve existing puzzles raised by different experimental conclusions drawn from different probes.Second, a new approach to the Hubbard model including nonlocal correlation effects is proposed. Formally based on the local expansion of the triply-irreducible functional, this approach, dubbed TRILEX, approximates the renormalized three-leg electron-boson vertex by a local but frequency-dependent vertex computed from an impurity model with retarded density-density and spin-spin interactions. This local vertex is used to construct frequency- and momentum-dependent self-energies capturing nonlocal correlation effects. By construction, this method reconciles two theoretical pictures of cuprate superconductors, namely the spin fluctuation theory at weak interaction strengths and the doped-Mott-insulator picture at strong coupling.This novel approach is applied to the single-band Hubbard model. It is shown to reduce to DMFT at strong coupling and high temperatures, and to fluctuation-exchange theories at weak coupling, while substantial deviations from both limits are observed at intermediate coupling. There, upon doping, antiferromagnetic spin fluctuations are observed to lead to a momentum-differentiated spectral intensity on the Fermi surface, which is reminiscent of the formation of Fermi arcs in photoemission measurements on cuprate superconductors.These two methodological developments are intrinsically linked to algorithmic aspects which are reviewed in the last part of this work. In particular, an open-source library dedicated to massively parallel computations in the field of quantum many-body physics, TRIQS, is presented, with a focus on error estimation through the binning and jackknife methods. The hybridization-expansion continuous-time quantum Monte-Carlo algorithm in the segment picture -- central to the TRILEX method -- and its state-of-the-art implementation are explained. Finally, as a further illustration, a new lightweight method relying on this algorithm and designed for realistic systems, the combined screened-exchange and dynamical DMFT method (SEx+DDMFT), is presented together with an application to the BaCo2As2 compound.
In this work we present a comprehensive analysis of collective electronic fluctuations and their effect on single-particle properties of the Hubbard model. Our approach is based on a standard dual fermion and boson scheme with the interaction truncated at the two-particle level. Within this framework we compare various approximations that differ in the set of diagrams (ladder vs exact diagrammatic Monte Carlo), and/or in the form of the four-point interaction vertex (exact vs partially bosonized). This allows to evaluate the effect of all components of the four-point vertex function on the electronic self-energy. In particular, we observe that contributions that are not accounted for by the partially bosonized approximation for the vertex have only a minor effect on electronic degrees of freedom in a broad range of model parameters. In addition, we find that in the regime, where the ladder dual fermion approximation provides an accurate solution of the problem, the leading contribution to the self-energy is given by the longitudinal bosonic modes. This can be explained by the fact that contributions of transverse particle-hole and particle-particle modes partially cancel each other. Our results justify the applicability of the recently introduced dual triply irreducible local expansion (D-TRILEX) method that represents one of the simplest consistent diagrammatic extensions of the dynamical mean-field theory. We find that the self-consistent D-TRILEX approach is reasonably accurate also in challenging regimes of the Hubbard model, even where the dynamical mean-field theory does not provide the optimal local reference point (impurity problem) for the diagrammatic expansion.
In this work, we extend the dual triply irreducible local expansion (D-TRILEX) approach for correlated electronic systems by introducing a cluster reference system for the diagrammatic expansion. This framework allows us to consistently combine the exact treatment of short-range correlation effects within the cluster, with an efficient diagrammatic description of the long-range charge and spin collective fluctuations beyond the cluster. We demonstrate the effectiveness of our approach by applying it to the one-dimensional nano-ring Hubbard model, where the low dimensionality enhances non-local correlations. Our results show that the cluster extension of D-TRILEX accurately reproduces the electronic self-energy at momenta corresponding to the Fermi energy, in good agreement with the reliable Hirsch-Fye quantum Monte Carlo solution of the problem. We further compare this method with the more computationally demanding parquet dynamical vertex approximation and find that, our method yields substantially more accurate results at momenta associated with the Fermi surface. We show that the D-TRILEX diagrammatic extension drastically reduces the periodization ambiguity of cluster quantities when mapping back to the original lattice, compared to cluster dynamical mean-field theory (CDMFT). Furthermore, we identify the CDMFT impurity problem as the main source of the translational-symmetry breaking and propose a computational scheme for improving the starting point for the cluster-diagrammatic expansion.
Accurately describing many-body effects in multi-orbital systems remains a major challenge in theoretical condensed matter physics. At present, there is a significant methodological gap between the numerical tools used in ab initio computational materials science and those developed to study strong electronic correlations. The former can treat realistic, large-scale systems but typically neglect many-body effects, while the latter focus on simplified models with only a few degrees of freedom, as only such models can be solved accurately in the presence of strong interactions. The purpose of this thesis is to bridge these two approaches and establish a systematic theoretical framework for realistic correlated electronic materials. This involves a full-cycle methodology that begins with constructing ab initio interacting models from density-functional theory, solving them using dynamical mean-field theory to capture local correlations, and extending beyond to incorporate non-local collective electronic fluctuations. To this end, we introduce the "dual" approach to strong correlations, which includes the dual fermion, dual boson, and dual triply irreducible local expansion methods. The central idea of the dual theories is to shift the reference point of the conventional Feynman diagrammatic expansion from a non-interacting electronic system to an interacting but exactly solvable one. Integrating out this reference system recasts the expansion in an effective dual space, where all diagrammatic building blocks are renormalized by the corresponding impurity quantities. This procedure transforms a non-perturbative expansion in the original variables into a perturbative expansion in terms of dual fermionic and bosonic fields, exact in both the weak- and strong-coupling limits. In this thesis, we collect and systematize the major developments of dual techniques achieved to date.
We design an efficient and balanced approach that captures major effects of collective electronic fluctuations in strongly correlated fermionic systems using a simple diagrammatic expansion on a basis of dynamical mean-field theory. For this aim we perform a partial bosonization of collective fermionic fluctuations in leading channels of instability. We show that a simultaneous account for different bosonic channels can be done in a consistent way that allows to avoid the famous Fierz ambiguity problem. The present method significantly improves a description of an effective screened interaction W in both charge and spin channels, and has a great potential for application to realistic GW-like calculations for magnetic materials.
Strong electronic correlations are the root of many fascinating phenomena of condensed matter physics. However, they also make calculations notoriously difficult. This thesis is concerned with the development and improvement of computational methods for strongly correlated electron systems. After a brief recapitulation of the Green’s function formalism,which is the theoretical basis of most such methods, we discuss the analytical continuation from imaginary to real frequencies. Especially the maximum entropy method is explained in detail and an implementation there of is presented.The remainder of this thesis deals with methods to compute Green’s functions on thei maginary frequency axis. First, the Anderson impurity model (AIM) is considered. It can be solved numerically – a task for which several methods exist. We focus on continuous-time quantum Monte Carlo with worm sampling, through which various kinds of correlation functions can be calculated. On this basis we derive and implement symmetric improved estimators that allow for the computation of the self-energy and vertex functions where the level of stochastic noise is largely reduced with respect to conventional estimators.As a next step the dynamical mean-field theory (DMFT) is introduced as a method to capture local correlations in the Hubbard model (HM) by self-consistently mapping it onto the AIM. We study the convergence behavior of this iterative procedure and the improvement of convergence due to mixing. Then, we compare electron scattering rates from DMFT in the weak-coupling regime of the square-lattice HM to results from Boltzmann scattering theory.While local correlations account for many interesting phenomena, such as the Mott-Hubbard metal-insulator transition, they are not sufficient to correctly describe, e.g., the physics of phase transitions in two- or three-dimensional systems. It is thus the final step in this thesis to also include nonlocal correlations by means of the dynamical vertex approximation (DΓA). For this we develop a new self-consistency scheme, which is then applied to several systems: We study the square-lattice HM, where we compare to benchmark methods in the weak-coupling regime, but also present results for intermediate and strong coupling. Furthermore, a two-band model with doping and a three-band Wannier model for strontium vanadate are studied. As an application of our new self-consistent DΓA, we study the effects of geometrical frustration in the kagome lattice, where we also compare our results to determinant quantum Monte Carlo.