Contributor info: Dr Bram Vanhecke

Bram Vanhecke, David Devoogdt, Frank Verstraete, Laurens Vanderstraeten

SciPost Phys. 14, 085 (2023) · published 26 April 2023 | Toggle abstract · pdf

We provide an efficient approximation for the exponential of a local operator in quantum spin systems using tensor-network representations of a cluster expansion. We benchmark this cluster tensor network operator (cluster TNO) for one-dimensional systems, and show that the approximation works well for large real- or imaginary-time steps. We use this formalism for representing the thermal density operator of a two-dimensional quantum spin system at a certain temperature as a single cluster TNO, which we can then contract by standard contraction methods for two-dimensional tensor networks. We apply this approach to the thermal phase transition of the transverse-field Ising model on the square lattice, and we find through a scaling analysis that the cluster-TNO approximation gives rise to a continuous phase transition in the correct universality class; by increasing the order of the cluster expansion we find good values of the critical point up to surprisingly low temperatures.

Bram Vanhecke, Maarten Van Damme, Jutho Haegeman, Laurens Vanderstraeten, Frank Verstraete

SciPost Phys. Core 4, 004 (2021) · published 19 February 2021 | Toggle abstract · pdf

A central primitive in quantum tensor network simulations is the problem of approximating a matrix product state with one of a lower bond dimension. This problem forms the central bottleneck in algorithms for time evolution and for contracting projected entangled pair states. We formulate a tangent-space based variational algorithm to achieve this for uniform (infinite) matrix product states. The algorithm exhibits a favourable scaling of the computational cost, and we demonstrate its usefulness by several examples involving the multiplication of a matrix product state with a matrix product operator.