<!--HTML-->The Sinh-Gordon model is a 1+1 dimensional quantum field theory with a potential cosh(b phi) that is quite peculiar. It is at the same time exactly solvable (for many observables) and not well understood. I will present the results of a variational exploration of its strong coupling regime with a recent generalization of continuous matrix product states. The advantage of this method is that it does not require introducing a cutoff, UV or IR, is fully non-perturbative, typically converges fast for Hamiltonians with polynomial interactions, and gives rigorous energy upper bounds. Its application to the Sinh-Gordon model is only partly successful: observables can be computed accurately up to fairly large values of the coupling, but the ultra strong coupling regime remains difficult to access without extrapolations. As a result, the behavior near the self-dual point is not yet fully settled. I will show the basics of relativistic continuous matrix product states, explain how they typically work for phi^4 like theories or even the easier Sine-Gordon model and finally discuss my attempts at taming Sinh-Gordon.
<!--HTML-->The Sinh-Gordon model is a 1+1 dimensional quantum field theory with a potential cosh(b phi) that is quite peculiar. It is at the same time exactly solvable (for many observables) and not well understood. I will present the results of a variational exploration of its strong coupling regime with a recent generalization of continuous matrix product states. The advantage of this method is that it does not require introducing a cutoff, UV or IR, is fully non-perturbative, typically converges fast for Hamiltonians with polynomial interactions, and gives rigorous energy upper bounds. Its application to the Sinh-Gordon model is only partly successful: observables can be computed accurately up to fairly large values of the coupling, but the ultra strong coupling regime remains difficult to access without extrapolations. As a result, the behavior near the self-dual point is not yet fully settled. I will show the basics of relativistic continuous matrix product states, explain how they typically work for phi^4 like theories or even the easier Sine-Gordon model and finally discuss my attempts at taming Sinh-Gordon.
I study the Sine-Gordon (SG) and Sinh-Gordon (ShG) quantum field theories with a recently introduced variational method, the relativistic continuous matrix product states (RCMPS). The main advantage is to work directly in the thermodynamic limit, and without any UV regulator. The SG model is well understood and integrable, which provides a convenient benchmark for the variational method and serves as a warm-up. RCMPS approximate the ground state of the SG model arbitrary well up to the free Fermion point [coupling β=4π in equal-time quantization convention, or b=1/2 in CFT convention], where the ground energy collapses to −∞, and some renormalized ansatz would be needed. The ShG model, while integrable, is less understood and its strong coupling regime β≈1 is subject to some controversy. RCMPS also fit the ground state of the ShG model up to approximately b=1/2, after which their predictions start to deviate substantially from the "exact" results. This is more puzzling as nothing is expected to happen physically for the ShG model at that point (eg, the ground energy density does not diverge). Either the "exact" ShG results are not exact (the analytic continuation of the SG Bethe Ansatz solution is unwarranted), or, more likely, the physical structure of the ShG ground state changes in such a way that it becomes out of reach of the RCMPS manifold for reasonable bond dimensions.
Strongly coupled quantum field theories in (1+1) dimensions are notoriously hard to solve non-perturbatively. Variational methods, despite their success for quantum many-body physics on the lattice, have long lacked a natural ansatz adapted to the relativistic setting. This monograph explains the intuition behind relativistic continuous matrix product states (RCMPS), a variational ansatz tailored to (1+1)-dimensional QFT, and reports on several years of progress in developing and applying this approach. Using Riemannian optimization on the manifold of RCMPS, we obtain competitive non-perturbative approximations to ground state energies and local observables in the φ4, Sine-Gordon, and Sinh-Gordon models, including in strongly coupled regimes where perturbation theory fails. We then describe extensions to models with several interacting fields. Beyond energy density and local observables, we show how the framework can be used to evaluate non-local observables (defects) and, through an original linear programming approach, to extract spectral data such as particle masses. We close by discussing the current limitations of the method and the most promising directions for future work.
The variational method is a powerful approach to solve many-body quantum problems nonperturbatively. However, in the context of relativistic quantum field theory, it needs to meet three seemingly incompatible requirements outlined by Feynman: extensivity, computability, and lack of UV sensitivity. In practice, variational methods break one of the three, which translates into the need to have an IR or UV cutoff. In this letter, I introduce a relativistic modification of continuous matrix product states that satisfies the three requirements jointly in 1+1 dimensions. I apply it to the self-interacting scalar field, without UV cutoff and directly in the thermodynamic limit. Numerical evidence suggests the error decreases faster than any power law in the number of parameters, while the cost remains only polynomial.
We develop a variational framework for addressing two-dimensional non-integrable quantum field theories through the exact structure of their integrable counterparts. Concentrating on the φ4 Landau-Ginzburg model, we use the analytical Vacuum Expectation Values and Form Factors of local operators in the sinh-Gordon theory as the foundation of a variational ansatz. In this way, we obtain controlled estimates of central physical quantities of the φ4 theory - such as the finite-volume ground-state energy and the physical mass as a function of the coupling constant. The strengths of the variational methods are leveraged in combination with the Hamiltonian truncation techniques and the LeClair-Mussardo formula, which also allow to probe the accuracy of the variational approximation varying the system size. Within the weak-coupling regime, a detailed numerical analysis reveals the behaviour of the finite-volume spectrum, the ground-state energy, and the elastic part of the scattering matrix, showing how the rigorous machinery of integrable models can serve as a guiding light into the complex landscape of non-integrable quantum field dynamics.
I introduce a modification of continuous matrix product states (CMPS) that makes them adapted to relativistic quantum field theories (QFT). These relativistic CMPS can be used to solve genuine (1+1)-dimensional QFT without UV cutoff and directly in the thermodynamic limit. The main idea is to work directly in the basis that diagonalizes the free part of the model considered, which allows one to fit its short distance behavior exactly. This makes computations slightly less trivial than with standard CMPS. However, they remain feasible, and I present all the steps needed for the optimization. The asymptotic cost as a function of the bond dimension remains the same as for standard CMPS. I illustrate the method on the self-interacting scalar field, also known as the ${\ensuremath{\phi}}_{2}^{4}$ model. Aside from providing unequaled precision in the continuum, the numerical results obtained are truly variational, and thus provide rigorous energy upper bounds.
Abstract. We consider quantum quenches to the sinh-Gordon integrable quantum field theory from a particular class of initial states. Our analysis includes the case of mass and interaction quenches starting from a non-interacting theory. By means of the recently developed quench action method, we fully characterize the stationary state reached at long times after the quench in terms of the corresponding rapidity distribution. We also provide exact results for the expectation values of arbitrary vertex operators in the post-quench stationary state by proposing a formula based on the analogy with the standard thermodynamic Bethe ansatz. Finally, we comment on the behavior of the post-quench stationary state under the mapping between the sinh-Gordon field theory and the one-dimensional Lieb–Liniger model.