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arXiv:cond-mat/0608042 · Physical Review B

Exploring contractor renormalization: Perspectives and tests on the two-dimensional Heisenberg antiferromagnet

M. Stewart Siu, Marvin Weinstein

Published May 2, 2007• 14 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

Contractor renormalization (CORE) is a numerical renormalization method for Hamiltonian systems that has found applications in particle and condensed matter physics. There have been few studies, however, on further understanding of what exactly it does and its convergence properties. The current work has two main objectives. First, we wish to investigate the convergence of the cluster expansion for a two-dimensional Heisenberg antiferromagnet. This is important because the linked cluster expansion used to evaluate this formula nonperturbatively is not controlled by a small parameter. Here we present a study of three different blocking schemes which reveals some surprises and, in particular, leads us to suggest a scheme for defining successive terms in the cluster expansion. Our second goal is to present some new perspectives on CORE in light of recent developments to make it accessible to more researchers, including those in quantum information science. We make some comparison to entanglement-based approaches and discuss how it may be possible to improve or generalize the method.

DOI
10.1103/physrevb.75.184403

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Contractor renormalization group and the Haldane conjecture

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The contractor renormalization group formalism (CORE) is a real-space renormalization group method which is the Hamiltonian analogue of the Wilson exact renormalization group equations. In an earlier paper [Phys. Rev. D 61, 034505 (2000)] I showed that the CORE method could be used to map a theory of free quarks and quarks interacting with gluons into a generalized frustrated Heisenberg antiferromagnet (HAF) and proposed using CORE methods to study these theories. Since generalizations of HAF's exhibit all sorts of subtle behavior which, from a continuum point of view, are related to topological properties of the theory, it is important to know that CORE can be used to extract this physics. In this paper I show that despite the folklore which asserts that all real-space renormalization group schemes are necessarily inaccurate, simple CORE computations can give highly accurate results even if one only keeps a small number of states per block and a few terms in the cluster expansion. In addition I argue that even very simple CORE computations give a much better qualitative understanding of the physics than naive renormalization group methods. In particular I show that the simplest CORE computation yields a first-principles understanding of how the famous Haldane conjecture works for the case of the $\mathrm{s}\mathrm{p}\mathrm{i}\mathrm{n}\ensuremath{-}1/2$ and $\mathrm{s}\mathrm{p}\mathrm{i}\mathrm{n}\ensuremath{-}1$ HAF.

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Numerical contractor renormalization method for quantum spin models

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We demonstrate the utility of the numerical contractor renormalization (CORE) method for quantum spin systems by studying one- and two-dimensional model cases. Our approach consists of two steps: (i) building an effective Hamiltonian with longer ranged interactions up to a certain cutoff using the CORE algorithm and (ii) solving this new model numerically on finite clusters by exact diagonalization and performing finite-size extrapolations to obtain results in the thermodynamic limit. This approach, giving complementary information to analytical treatments of the CORE Hamiltonian, can be used as a semiquantitative numerical method. For ladder-type geometries, we explicitely check the accuracy of the effective models by increasing the range of the effective interactions until reaching convergence. Our results in the perturbative regime and also away from it are in good agreement with previously established results. In two dimensions we consider the plaquette lattice and the kagom\'e lattice as nontrivial test cases for the numerical CORE method. As it becomes more difficult to extend the range of the effective interactions in two dimensions, we propose diagnostic tools (such as the density matrix of the local building block) to ascertain the validity of the basis truncation. On the plaquette lattice we have an excellent description of the system in both the disordered and the ordered phases, thereby showing that the CORE method is able to resolve quantum phase transitions. On the kagom\'e lattice we find that the previously proposed twofold degenerate $S=1∕2$ basis can account for a large number of phenomena of the spin $1∕2$ kagom\'e system. For spin $3∕2$, however, this basis does not seem to be sufficient. In general we are able to simulate system sizes which correspond to an $8\ifmmode\times\else\texttimes\fi{}8$ lattice for the plaquette lattice or a 48-site kagom\'e lattice, which are beyond the possibilities of a standard exact diagonalization approach.

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arXiv:cond-mat/0510785•AIP conference proceedings•Jan 1, 2006•1 citation
Contractor renormalization (CORE) is a numerical renormalization method for Hamiltonian systems that has found applications in particle and condensed matter physics. There have been few studies, however, on further understanding of what exactly it does and its convergence properties. The current work has two main objectives. First, we wish to investigate the convergence of the cluster expansion for a two-dimensional Heisenberg antiferromagnet. This is important because the linked cluster expansion used to evaluate this formula nonperturbatively is not controlled by a small parameter. Here we present a study of three different blocking schemes which reveals some surprises and, in particular, leads us to suggest a scheme for defining successive terms in the cluster expansion. Our second goal is to present some new perspectives on CORE in light of recent developments to make it accessible to more researchers, including those in quantum information science. We make some comparison to entanglement-based approaches and discuss how it may be possible to improve or generalize the method.
The contractor renormalization group formalism (CORE) is a real-space renormalization group method which is the Hamiltonian analogue of the Wilson exact renormalization group equations. In an earlier paper [Phys. Rev. D 61, 034505 (2000)] I showed that the CORE method could be used to map a theory of free quarks and quarks interacting with gluons into a generalized frustrated Heisenberg antiferromagnet (HAF) and proposed using CORE methods to study these theories. Since generalizations of HAF's exhibit all sorts of subtle behavior which, from a continuum point of view, are related to topological properties of the theory, it is important to know that CORE can be used to extract this physics. In this paper I show that despite the folklore which asserts that all real-space renormalization group schemes are necessarily inaccurate, simple CORE computations can give highly accurate results even if one only keeps a small number of states per block and a few terms in the cluster expansion. In addition I argue that even very simple CORE computations give a much better qualitative understanding of the physics than naive renormalization group methods. In particular I show that the simplest CORE computation yields a first-principles understanding of how the famous Haldane conjecture works for the case of the $\mathrm{s}\mathrm{p}\mathrm{i}\mathrm{n}\ensuremath{-}1/2$ and $\mathrm{s}\mathrm{p}\mathrm{i}\mathrm{n}\ensuremath{-}1$ HAF.
We demonstrate the utility of the numerical contractor renormalization (CORE) method for quantum spin systems by studying one- and two-dimensional model cases. Our approach consists of two steps: (i) building an effective Hamiltonian with longer ranged interactions up to a certain cutoff using the CORE algorithm and (ii) solving this new model numerically on finite clusters by exact diagonalization and performing finite-size extrapolations to obtain results in the thermodynamic limit. This approach, giving complementary information to analytical treatments of the CORE Hamiltonian, can be used as a semiquantitative numerical method. For ladder-type geometries, we explicitely check the accuracy of the effective models by increasing the range of the effective interactions until reaching convergence. Our results in the perturbative regime and also away from it are in good agreement with previously established results. In two dimensions we consider the plaquette lattice and the kagom\'e lattice as nontrivial test cases for the numerical CORE method. As it becomes more difficult to extend the range of the effective interactions in two dimensions, we propose diagnostic tools (such as the density matrix of the local building block) to ascertain the validity of the basis truncation. On the plaquette lattice we have an excellent description of the system in both the disordered and the ordered phases, thereby showing that the CORE method is able to resolve quantum phase transitions. On the kagom\'e lattice we find that the previously proposed twofold degenerate S=1∕2S=1∕2S=1∕2 basis can account for a large number of phenomena of the spin 1∕21∕21∕2 kagom\'e system. For spin 3∕23∕23∕2, however, this basis does not seem to be sufficient. In general we are able to simulate system sizes which correspond to an $8\ifmmode\times\else\texttimes\fi{}8$ lattice for the plaquette lattice or a 48-site kagom\'e lattice, which are beyond the possibilities of a standard exact diagonalization approach.
The contractor renormalization group method, a new approach to solving Hamiltonian lattice systems, is presented. The method defines a systematic and nonperturbative means of implementing Kadanoff-Wilson real-space renormalization group transformations using cluster expansion and contraction techniques. We illustrate the approach and demonstrate its effectiveness using scalar field theory, the Heisenberg antiferromagnetic chain, and the anisotropic Ising chain. Future applications to the Hubbard and $t\ensuremath{-}J$ models and lattice gauge theory are discussed.
The COntractor REnormalization group method was devised in 1994 by Morningstar and Weinstein. It was primarily aimed at extracting the physics of lattice quantum field theories (like lattice Quantum Chromodynamics). However, it is a general method of analyzing Hamiltonian lattice systems, e.g. Ising, Heisenberg or Hubbard models. The aim of this work is to show the application of CORE to one-dimensional quantum systems -- the Heisenberg zig-zag model and the Hubbard chain. As a test of the method, the ground state energy of these systems will be calculated.
We propose a bootstrap method for approximating the long-range terms in the contractor renormalization method. The idea is tested on the two-dimensional Heisenberg antiferromagnet and the frustrated ${J}_{2}\text{\ensuremath{-}}{J}_{1}$ model. We obtain renormalization group flows that directly reveal the N\'eel phase of the unfrustrated Heisenberg antiferromagnet and the existence of a phase transition in the ${J}_{2}\text{\ensuremath{-}}{J}_{1}$ model for weak frustration. However, we find that this bootstrap method is dependent on blocking and truncation schemes. For this reason, we discuss these dependencies and unresolved issues that researchers who use this approach must consider.
We demonstrate the utility of effective Hamilonians for studying strongly correlated systems, such as quantum spin systems. After defining local relevant degrees of freedom, the numerical Contractor Renormalization (CORE) method is applied in two steps: (i) building an effective Hamiltonian with longer ranged interactions up to a certain cut‐off using the CORE algorithm and (ii) solving this new model numerically on finite clusters by exact diagonalization and performing finite‐size extrapolations to obtain results in the thermodynamic limit. This approach, giving complementary information to analytical treatments of the CORE Hamiltonian, can be used as a semi‐quantitative numerical method. For ladder type geometries, we explicitely check the accuracy of the effective models by increasing the range of the effective interactions until reaching convergence. Our results both in the doped and undoped case are in good agreement with previously established results. In two dimensions we consider the plaquette lattice and the kagomé lattice as non‐trivial test cases for the numerical CORE method. As it becomes more difficult to extend the range of the effective interactions in two dimensions, we propose diagnostic tools (such as the density matrix of the local building block) to ascertain the validity of the basis truncation. On the plaquette lattice we have an excellent description of the system in both the disordered and the ordered phases, thereby showing that the CORE method is able to resolve quantum phase transitions. On the kagomé lattice we find that the previously proposed twofold degenerate S = 1/2 basis can account for a large number of phenomena of the spin 1/2 kagomé system and gives a good starting point to study the doped case.