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

Quantum spin chains are prototype quantum many-body systems. They are employed in the description of various complex physical phenomena. The goal of this paper is to provide an introduction to the subject by focusing on the time evolution of a Heisenberg spin-1/2 chain and interpreting the results based on the analysis of the eigenvalues, eigenstates, and symmetries of the system. We make available online all computer codes used to obtain our data.

The spin one-half Heisenberg chain with $U_q[SU(2)]$ symmetry is studied via density-matrix renormalization. Ground-state energy and $q$-symmetric correlation functions are calculated for the non-hermitian case $q=\exp(i\pi/(r+1))$ with integer $r$. This gives bulk and surface exponents for (para)fermionic correlations in the related Ising and Potts models. The case of real $q$ corresponding to a diffusion problem is treated analytically.

We present for the first time time-dependent density-matrix renormalization-group simulations (t-DMRG) at finite temperatures. It is demonstrated how a combination of finite-temperature t-DMRG and time-series prediction allows for an easy and very accurate calculation of spectral functions in one-dimensional quantum systems, irrespective of their statistics, for arbitrary temperatures. This is illustrated with spin structure factors of XX and XXX spin-1/2 chains. For the XX m...

The eigenstates of many-body localized (MBL) Hamiltonians exhibit low entanglement. We adapt the highly successful density-matrix renormalization group method, which is usually used to find modestly entangled ground states of local Hamiltonians, to find individual highly excited eigenstates of many body localized Hamiltonians. The adaptation builds on the distinctive spatial structure of such eigenstates. We benchmark our method against the well studied random field Heisenber...

I revisit the infinite-size variant of the Density Matrix Renormalization Group (iDMRG) algorithm for obtaining a fixed-point translationally invariant matrix product wavefunction in the context of one-dimensional quantum systems. A crucial ingredient of this algorithm is an efficient transformation for obtaining the matrix elements of the wavefunction as the lattice size is increased, and I introduce here a versatile transformation that is demonstrated to be much more effect...

We investigate the density matrix renormalization group (DMRG) discovered by White and show that in the case where the renormalization eventually converges to a fixed point the DMRG ground state can be simply written as a ``matrix product'' form. This ground state can also be rederived through a simple variational ansatz making no reference to the DMRG construction. We also show how to construct the ``matrix product'' states and how to calculate their properties, including th...

A distributed-memory parallelization strategy for the density matrix renormalization group is proposed for cases where correlation functions are required. This new strategy has substantial improvements with respect to previous works. A scalability analysis shows an overall serial fraction of 9.4% and an efficiency of around 60% considering up to eight nodes. Sources of possible parallel slowdown are pointed out and solutions to circumvent these issues are brought forward in o...

A new density matrix renormalisation group (DMRG) approach is presented for quantum systems of two spatial dimensions. In particular, it is shown that it is possible to create a multi-chain-type 2D DMRG approach which utilises previously determined system and environment blocks {\it at all points}. One firstly builds up effective quasi-1D system and environment blocks of width $L$ and these quasi-1D blocks are then used to as the initial building-blocks of a new 2D infinite-l...

We present a flexible density-matrix renormalization group approach to calculate finite-temperature spectral functions of one-dimensional strongly correlated quantum systems. The method combines the purification of the finite-temperature density operator with a moment expansion of the Green's function. Using this approach, we study finite-temperature properties of dynamical spectral functions of spin-1/2 XXZ chains with Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya interactions in magnetic fields an...

A major advance in density-matrix renormalization group (DMRG) calculations has been achieved by the invention of highly efficient DMRG techniques for the simulation of real-time dynamics of strongly correlated quantum systems in one dimension. Starting from established linear-response techniques in DMRG and early attempts at real-time dynamics, we go on to review two current methods which both implement the idea of adapting the effective Hilbert space of DMRG to the quantum ...