We propose a density-matrix renormalization-group (DMRG) approach to study lattices including bosons. The key to the approach is an exact mapping of a boson site containing
2N states to
N pseudosites, each with 2 states. The pseudosites can be viewed as the binary digits of a boson level. We apply the pseudosite DMRG method to the polaron problem in the one- and two-dimensional Holstein models. Ground-state results are presented for a wide range of electron-phonon coupling strengths and phonon frequencies on lattices large enough (up to 80 sites in one dimension and up to $20\ifmmode\times\else\texttimes\fi{}20$ sites in two dimensions) to eliminate finite-size effects, with up to 128 phonon states per phonon mode. We find a smooth but quite abrupt crossover from a quasi-free-electron ground state with a slightly renormalized mass at weak electron-phonon coupling to a polaronic ground state with a large effective mass at strong coupling, in agreement with previous studies.
This thesis is concerned with open quantum systems, and more specifically, quantum impurity models. By this we mean a small local quantum system in contact with a macroscopic non-interacting environment. This can be used to model individual impurities in metals and quantum information systems where the influence from the surrounding environment is not negligible. The numerical renormalization group (NRG) is the traditional method to study quantum impurity models. However its application is limited when dealing with real-time dynamics and bosonic systems. In recent years some of NRG's techniques have been introduced to the density matrix renormalization group method (DMRG), which itself is the most powerful numerical method to study one-dimensional quantum systems. The resulting method shows great potential, and this thesis explores and extends the power of the NRG+DMRG combination in treating open quantum systems. We focus mainly on two types of problem. The first is an open quantum system with a time-dependent Hamiltonian, which for example could be the theoretical description of various problems encountered in qubit manipulation. We combine NRG discretization and adaptive time-dependent DMRG (t-DMRG) to study the dissipative Landau-Zener problem. We also use this method to study the quantum decoherence process and the dynamical properties of the telegraph noise model. The results show that the NRG and t-DMRG combination is a fast, accurate and versatile method for such problems. The second type of problem we study involves the quantum critical properties of one- and two-bath spin-boson models. Unlike fermion and spin models, models with bosons are difficult to treat numerically as each boson basis has an infinite number of dimensions. By introducing the optimal boson basis into the variational matrix product state method (VMPS), which is a variant of DMRG, we can deal with an effective local boson basis as large as
1010. This is the crucial improvement over NRG which can only deal with at most a few dozen local basis states. With this powerful tool we have settled a controversy about the nature of the quantum phase transition in a sub-Ohmic spin-boson model regarding quantum to classical mapping. There, NRG fails to yield the right result due to the highly truncated local boson basis. We also explore the phase diagram of the two-bath spin-boson model and find a new critical phase. We demonstrate that NRG+VMPS with optimal boson basis represents a powerful setting to study quantum impurity models with a bosonic environment.