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arXiv:nucl-th/0104085 · Physical Review Letters

Exact Stochastic Mean-Field Approach to the Fermionic Many-Body Problem

Olivier Juillet, Ph. Chomaz

Published Mar 22, 2002• 45 citations
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Abstract

We investigate a reformulation of the dynamics of interacting fermion systems in terms of a stochastic extension of time-dependent Hartree-Fock equations. From a path-integral representation of the evolution operator, we show that the exact N-body state can be interpreted as a coherent average over Slater determinants evolving in a random mean-field. The imaginary time propagation is also presented and gives a similar scheme which converges to the exact ground state. In addition, the growth of statistical errors is examined to show the stability of this stochastic formulation.

DOI
10.1103/physrevlett.88.142503

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We investigate a reformulation of the dynamics of interacting fermion systems in terms of a stochastic extension of time-dependent Hartree-Fock equations. From a path-integral representation of the evolution operator, we show that the exact N-body state can be interpreted as a coherent average over Slater determinants evolving in a random mean-field. The imaginary time propagation is also presented and gives a similar scheme which converges to the exact ground state. In addition, the growth of statistical errors is examined to show the stability of this stochastic formulation.
We show that the dynamics of interacting fermions can be exactly replaced by a quantum jump theory in the many-body density matrix space. In this theory, jumps occur between densities formed of pairs of Slater determinants, ${D}_{\mathit{ab}}=|{\ensuremath{\Phi}}_{a}\ensuremath{\rangle}\ensuremath{\langle}{\ensuremath{\Phi}}_{b}|$, where each state evolves according to the stochastic Schr\"odinger equation given by O. Juillet and Ph. Chomaz [Phys. Rev. Lett. 88, 142503 (2002)]. A stochastic Liouville-von Neumann equation is derived as well as the associated. Bogolyubov-Born-Green-Kirwood-Yvon hierarchy. Due to the specific form of the many-body density along the path, the presented theory is equivalent to a stochastic theory in one-body density matrix space, in which each density matrix evolves according to its own mean-field augmented by a one-body noise. Guided by the exact reformulation, a stochastic mean-field dynamics valid in the weak coupling approximation is proposed. This theory leads to an approximate treatment of two-body effects similar to the extended time-dependent Hartree-Fock scheme. In this stochastic mean-field dynamics, statistical mixing can be directly considered and jumps occur on a coarse-grained time scale. Accordingly, numerical effort is expected to be significantly reduced for applications.
The time-dependent fermionic Hartree-Fock equations can be stochastically extended in such a way as to become the exact representation of quantum dynamics. This fact was first observed in the work of Juillet and Chomaz [Phys. Rev. Lett. 88, 142503 (2002)]. During the past decade, this observation has led to the emergence of a whole family of stochastic wave-function methods for fermions. The common feature of all these methods is that they are based on the expansion of the density operator over the dyadic product of the two fermionic Slater determinant states. In this work, we develop a unified and rigorous foundation for this family of methods. We find a general form of stochastic equations and describe the sufficient conditions under which these methods converge towards exact quantum dynamics. To achieve these goals, we employ the representation of quantum dynamics in generalized phase space. In particular, we consider the quasiprobability distributions which emerge in these stochastic methods and their master equations. It is shown that the convergence towards exact quantum dynamics is controlled by the problem of boundary terms. We provide an example of stochastic Hartree-Fock method which is well-defined and free from this problem.
A new method for the simulation of ground-state properties of interacting fermions is introduced. A trial wave function, which is assumed to be a Slater determinant, is propagated to large imaginary times. The quantum many-body propagator is represented by a coherent superposition of single-particle propagators by means of a Hubbard-Stratonovich transformation. The resulting functional integral is performed by stochastic methods based on Langevin dynamics. Numerical stability is achieved by orthonormalizing the propagating single-particle orbitals entering the Slater determinant. The problem of the positiveness of the statistical weight is addressed and solved in most cases. Illustrative examples are given for the 1D and 2D Hubbard models.
We introduce the fermionized time-dependent Hartree-Fock (fTDHF), a real-time quantum dynamics method for spin-1/2 Hamiltonians following their mapping to fermions via the Jordan-Wigner transformation. fTDHF is formally equivalent to exact dynamics in the case of free fermions and can efficiently handle non-local string operators arising from long-range interactions via transition matrix elements between non-orthogonal Slater determinants. We show that the fTDHF method can be implemented on a classical computer with a cost that scales polynomially with system size, and linearly with the time steps. We benchmark fTDHF against exact dynamics on three separate spin-1/2 models, representing adiabatic preparation of states with long-range correlations, disorder-driven observation of many-body localization, and particle production in the Schwinger model. For each of these systems, fTDHF is shown to reproduce the qualitative dynamics generated by the exact evolutions, while maintaining a simple physical picture due to its mean-field nature.
A common approximate way to study the time evolution of a superfluid Fermi gas is to consider the mean-field time-dependent BCS equations. We show that, by inclusion of an appropriate fluctuating term in these mean-field equations, the exact quantum evolution of the Fermi gas is recovered, after an average over all possible realizations of the noise term: this leads to an exact quantum Monte Carlo technique for the real-time evolution of an interacting fermionic system. In practice, we derive the general conditions on the noise term, ensuring that the exact dynamics is reproduced, and we explore several explicit realizations of this noise term, trying to minimize the statistical spreading of the quantum Monte Carlo simulations. The convergence issue is discussed in detail, with upper bounds obtained on the statistical spreading, and the relation between the stochastic and the mean-field equations is analyzed. Finally, we apply the method to a simple two-site model, to exemplify that the simulations can display effects out of reach of the mean-field approximation.
We review recent results concerning the evolution of fermionic systems. We are interested in the mean field regime, where particles experience many weak collisions. For fermions, the mean field regime is naturally linked with a semiclassical limit. Assuming some regularity of the interaction potential we show that the many body evolution of initial states close to Slater determinants exhibiting the appropriate semiclassical structure can be approximated by the Hartree-Fock equation. Our method provides precise bounds on the rate of the convergence.