Density matrix algorithm for the calculation of dynamical properties of low dimensional systems

We describe the Density Matrix Renormalization Group algorithms for time dependent and time independent Hamiltonians. This paper is a brief but comprehensive introduction to the subject for anyone willing to enter in the field or write the program source code from scratch.

The density matrix renormalization group (``DMRG'') discovered by White has shown to be a powerful method to understand the properties of many one dimensional quantum systems. In the case where renormalization eventually converges to a fixed point we show that quantum states in the thermodynamic limit with periodic boundary conditions can be simply represented by a special type of product ground state with a natural description of Bloch states of elementary excitations that a...

The density-matrix renormalization group (DMRG) algorithm can be adapted to the calculation of dynamical correlation functions in various ways which all represent compromises between computational efficiency and physical accuracy. In this paper we reconsider the oldest approach based on a suitable Lanczos-generated approximate basis and implement it using matrix product states (MPS) for the representation of the basis states. The direct use of matrix product states combined w...

We describe an extension to the density matrix renormalization group method incorporating real time evolution into the algorithm. Its application to transport problems in systems out of equilibrium and frequency dependent correlation functions is discussed and illustrated in several examples. We simulate a scattering process in a spin chain which generates a spatially non-local entangled wavefunction.

We develop a correction to the density matrix used in density matrix renormalization group calculations to take into account the incompleteness of the environment block. The correction allows successful calculations using only a single site in the center of the system, rather than the standard two sites, improving typical computation times by a factor of two to four. In addition, in many cases where ordinary DMRG can get stuck in metastable configurations, the correction elim...

We study the one-dimensional $S=1/2$ Heisenberg model with a uniform and a staggered magnetic fields, using the dynamical density-matrix renormalization group (DDMRG) technique. The DDMRG enables us to investigate the dynamical properties of chain with lengths up to a few hundreds, and the results are numerically exact in the same sense as 'exact diagonalization' results are. Thus, we can analyze the low-energy spectrum almost in the thermodynamic limit. In this work, we calc...

We apply a recent adaptation of White's density matrix renormalisation group (DMRG) method to a simple quantum spin model, the dimerised $XY$ chain, in order to assess the applicabilty of the DMRG to quantum systems at non-zero temperature. We find that very reasonable results can be obtained for the thermodynamic functions down to low temperatures using a very small basis set. Low temperature results are found to be most accurate in the case when there is a substantial energ...

A useful concept for finding numerically the dominant correlations of a given ground state in an interacting quantum lattice system in an unbiased way is the correlation density matrix. For two disjoint, separated clusters, it is defined to be the density matrix of their union minus the direct product of their individual density matrices and contains all correlations between the two clusters. We show how to extract from the correlation density matrix a general overview of the...

In some cases the state of a quantum system with a large number of subsystems can be approximated efficiently by the density matrix renormalization group, which makes use of redundancies in the description of the state. Here we show that the achievable efficiency can be much better when performing density matrix renormalization group calculations in the Heisenberg picture, as only the observable of interest but not the entire state is considered. In some non-trivial cases, th...

We review White's density matrix renormalisation group method, an increasingly popular method for the solution of low dimensional quantum Hamiltonians. We describe some applications to frustrated spin systems, quantum critical phenomena, two dimensional classical and one dimensional quantum systems at non-zero temperature, and low energy properties of two dimensional quantum models such as the Hubbard and Heisenberg Hamiltonians.