Efficient and accurate algorithm for partition function, free energy and thermal entropy calculations is of great significance in statistical physics and quantum many-body physics. Here we present an unbiased but low-technical-barrier algorithm within the quantum Monte Carlo framework, which has exceptionally high accuracy and no systemic error. Compared with the conventional specific heat integral method and Wang-Landau sampling algorithm, our method can obtain a much more accurate result of the sub-leading coefficient of the entropy. This method can be widely used in both classical and quantum Monte Carlo simulations and is easy to be parallelized on computer.
In principle, the probability of configurations, determined by the system's partition function or wave function, encapsulates essential information about phases and phase transitions. Despite the exponentially large configuration space, we show that the generic correlation of distances between configurations, with a degree of freedom proportional to the lattice size, can probe phase transitions using importance sampling procedures like Monte Carlo simulations. The distribution of sampled distances varies significantly across different phases, suggesting universal critical behavior for uncertainty and participation entropy. For various classical spin models with different phases and transitions, finite-size analysis based on these quantities accurately identifies phase transitions and critical points. Notably, in all cases, the critical exponent derived from the uncertainty of distances equals the anomalous dimension governing real-space correlation decay. Thus, configuration space correlations, defined by distance uncertainties, share the same decay ratio as real-space correlations, determining the universality class of phase transitions. This work applies to diverse lattice models with different local degrees of freedom, e.g., two levels for Ising-like models, discrete multilevels for q-state clock models, and continuous local levels for the XY model, offering a robust, alternative method for understanding complex phases and transitions.
The mystery of the infamous sign problem in quantum Monte Carlo simulations mightily restricts applications of the method in fermionic and frustrated systems. A recent work [Science 375, 418 (2022)] made a remarkable breakthrough in the sign problem by pointing out that the sign can be used to probe phase transition. In this work, we proposed a general argument based on the definition of the sign that is related to the difference in free energy between the original and reference systems to clarify that the sign problem and phase transition cannot always be strictly related. The sign can exactly probe phase transition only if the free energy in the reference system is flat under variable parameters, which is almost impossible to design. Generally speaking, the conclusion that the sign can probe phase transition is survivorship bias without universality. To solve this problem, we define a modified sign that excludes the influence of the reference system, which can probe the phase transition strictly. The work gives an unbiased solution for detecting phase transition by the new modified sign.
This article proves a formula relating the multiplicity of an induced representation and that of the inducing datum for the Bessel and the Fourier-Jacobi models over Archimedean local fields by generalizing the approach of C. Moeglin and J.-L. Waldspurger in [MW12], which was successful for Bessel models of special orthogonal groups over non-Archimedean local fields. As an application, we give a uniform proof of the local Gan-Gross-Prasad conjecture for all classical groups over Archimedean local fields for generic local $L$-parameters based on the tempered basic cases.
Quantum many-body simulation provides a straightforward way to understand fundamental physics and connect with quantum information applications. However, suffering from exponentially growing Hilbert space size, characterization in terms of few-body probes in real space is often insufficient to tackle challenging problems such as quantum critical behavior and many-body localization (MBL) in higher dimensions. Here, we experimentally employ a new paradigm on a superconducting quantum processor, exploring such elusive questions from a Fock space view: mapping the many-body system onto an unconventional Anderson model on a complex Fock space network of many-body states. By observing the wave packet propagating in Fock space and the emergence of a statistical ergodic ensemble, we reveal a fresh picture for characterizing representative many-body dynamics: thermalization, localization, and scarring. In addition, we observe a quantum critical regime of anomalously enhanced wave packet width and deduce a critical point from the maximum wave packet fluctuations, which lend support for the two-dimensional MBL transition in finite-sized systems. Our work unveils a new perspective of exploring many-body physics in Fock space, demonstrating its practical applications on contentious MBL aspects such as criticality and dimensionality. Moreover, the entire protocol is universal and scalable, paving the way to finally solve a broader range of controversial many-body problems on future larger quantum devices.
The frustrated spin-$1/2$ $J_1-J_2$ Heisenberg model on the square lattice has been extensively studied since 1988 because of its close relationship to the high-temperature superconductivity in cuprates and more importantly involved novel phase of matter in its own right, namely, quantum spin liquid (QSL), one of hot topics in condensed matter physics in recent years. However, the phase diagram of the model, particularly in the maximally frustrated regime $J_2/J_1 \sim 0.5$, is quite controversial, and more seriously the nature of the QSL is not clear at all. Here we provide a pattern picture, on one hand, to show explicitly how the system evolves from the N\'eel antiferromagnetic (AFM) state at small $J_2$ to the striped AFM one at large $J_2$; on the other hand, to uncover the nature of the QSL if it exists in the intermediate $J_2$ coupling regime. For simplicity, we show our results by taking the square lattice $L=L_x \times L_y$ with size $L_x=L_y=4$ here and periodic boundary condition is considered, and furthermore, exact diagonalization is employed to confirm the correctness of our picture. Our results indicate that the highly frustration regime is characterized by diagonal two-domain, while the N\'eel AFM state has a diagonal single-domain and the striped AFM state shows itself as a diagonal four-domain, namely, completely diagonal antiferromagnetic order, in the present case. Increasing the system size, the number of the diagonal domains increases correspondingly, but the diagonal single-domain for the N\'eel AFM state and the diagonal $L_{x(y)}$-domain for the striped AFM state remain unchanged. Our results shed light on the understanding of the QSL.
We investigate the superconductor-insulator transition (SIT) in disordered quasi-one dimensional systems using the density-matrix renormalization group method. Focusing on the case of an interacting spinful Hamiltonian at quarter-filling, we contrast the differences arising in the SIT when the parent non-interacting model features either flat or dispersive bands. Furthermore, by comparing disorder distributions that preserve or not SU(2)-symmetry, we unveil the critical disorder amplitude that triggers insulating behavior. While scaling analysis suggests the transition to be of a Berezinskii-Kosterlitz-Thouless type for all models (two lattices and two disorder types), only in the flat-band model with Zeeman-like disorder the critical disorder is nonvanishing. In this sense, the flat-band structure does strengthen superconductivity. For both flat and dispersive band models, i) in the presence of SU(2)-symmetric random chemical potentials, the disorder-induced transition is from superconductor to insulator of singlet pairs; ii) for the Zeeman-type disorder, the transition is from superconductor to insulator of unpaired fermions. In all cases, our numerical results suggest no intermediate disorder-driven metallic phase.
We reinvestigate the phase transitions of the Ising model on the Kagome lattice with antiferromagnetic nearest-neighbor and ferromagnetic next-nearest-neighbor interactions, which has a six-state-clock spin ice ground state and two consecutive Berezinskii-Kosterlitz-Thouless (BKT) phase transitions. Employing the classical Monte Carlo (MC) simulations, the phases are characterized by the magnetic order parameter, and the critical temperatures are obtained by the finite-size scaling of related physical quantities. Moreover, we attempt to gain general information on the phase transitions from the MC process instead of MC results and successfully extract the correct transition points with surprisingly high accuracy. Specifically, we focus on the selected data set of uncorrelated MC configurations and quantify the MC process using the distribution of two-configuration Hamming distances in this small data collection. This distribution is more than a quantity that features different behaviors in different phases but also nicely supports the same BKT scaling form as the order parameter, from which we successfully determine the two BKT transition points with surprisingly high accuracy. We also discuss the connection between the phase transitions and the intrinsic dimension extracted from the Hamming distances, which is widely used in the growing field of machine learning and is reported to be able to detect critical points. Our findings provide a new understanding of the spin ice transitions in the Kagome lattice and can hopefully be used similarly to identify transitions in the quantum system on the same lattice with strong frustrations.
We investigate a multiqubit quantum battery-charger model, focusing on its potential emulation on a superconducting qubit chip. Using a large-spin representation, we first obtain the analytical form of the energy E_{B}(t) and power P_{B}(t), and their maximum values E_{B}^{max} and P_{B}^{max}, of the battery part by means of the antiferromagnetic Holstein-Primakoff transformation within the low-energy approximation. In this case, our results show that superextensive scaling behavior of P_{B}^{max} ensues. By further combining these with the ones obtained via exact diagonalization, we classify the dynamics of various physical quantities, including the entanglement between the battery and charger parts for system sizes encompassing over 10 000 qubits. Finally, by checking a diverse set of system configurations, including either a fixed battery size with a growing number of charger qubits or when both parts simultaneously grow, we classify the system size scalings of E_{B}^{max} and P_{B}^{max}, relating it with the entanglement entropy in the system. In agreement with the analytical results, robust superextensive behavior of P_{B}^{max} is also observed in this case. Our work provides an overall guide for expected features in experiments of quantum batteries emulated in superconducting qubit platforms, in particular ones that exhibit long-range couplings.
We numerically investigate the ground state of the extended $t$-$J$ Hamiltonian with periodic local modulations in one dimension by using the density-matrix renormalization group method. Examining charge and spin excitation gaps, as well as the pair binding energy, with extrapolated results to the thermodynamic limit, we obtain a rich ground-state phase diagram consisting of the metallic state, the superconducting state, the phase separation, and insulating states at commensurate fillings. Compared to the homogeneous 1D $t$-$J$ model, the superconductivity is greatly enhanced and stabilized by the flat-band structure. This superconducting state in quasi-periodic chains shares similar properties with ladder systems: significant negative pair binding energy occurs, and the singlet pairing correlation function dominates with the algebraic decay while the single-particle Green's function and spin correlation function decay exponentially. On the other hand, quasi-periodicity leads to nontrivial topological nature in insulating states, characterized by different integer Chern numbers at different fillings. Due to the interplay among the topology, the interaction, and the 1D confinement, gapless edge modes show strong spin-charge separation and in different regions can relate to different collective modes, which are the charge of a single fermion, the magnon, and the singlet-pair. We also find two interaction driven topological transitions: i) at particle filling $\rho=1/2$, the low-energy edge excitations change from the magnon to singlet-pair, accompanied with pair formation in bulk; and ii) at $\rho=3/4$, while the gapless edge mode remains the charge of a single fermion, there is a gap-closing point and a $\pi$-phase shift in the quasi-particle spectrum.
Quantum emulators, owing to their large degree of tunability and control, allow the observation of fine aspects of closed quantum many-body systems, as either the regime where thermalization takes place or when it is halted by the presence of disorder. The latter, dubbed many-body localization (MBL) phenomenon, describes the nonergodic behavior that is dynamically identified by the preservation of local information and slow entanglement growth. Here, we provide a precise observation of this same phenomenology in the case where the quenched on-site energy landscape is not disordered, but rather linearly varied, emulating the Stark MBL. To this end, we construct a quantum device composed of 29 functional superconducting qubits, faithfully reproducing the relaxation dynamics of a nonintegrable spin model. At large Stark potentials, local observables display periodic Bloch oscillations, a manifesting characteristic of the fragmentation of the Hilbert space in sectors that conserve dipole moments. The flexible programmability of our quantum emulator highlights its potential in helping the understanding of nontrivial quantum many-body problems, in direct complement to simulations in classical computers.
We propose an improved real-space parallel strategy for the density matrix renormalization group (DMRG) method, where boundaries of separate regions are adaptively distributed during DMRG sweeps. Our scheme greatly improves the parallel efficiency with shorter waiting time between two adjacent tasks, compared with the original real-space parallel DMRG with fixed boundaries. We implement our new strategy based on the message passing interface (MPI), and dynamically control the number of kept states according to the truncation error in each DMRG step. We study the performance of the new parallel strategy by calculating the ground state of a spin-cluster chain and a quantum chemical Hamiltonian of the water molecule. The maximum parallel efficiencies for these two models are 91% and 76% in 4 nodes, which are much higher than the real-space parallel DMRG with fixed boundaries.
We propose a new heterogeneous parallel strategy for the density matrix renormalization group (DMRG) method in the hybrid architecture with both central processing unit (CPU) and graphics processing unit (GPU).Focusing on the two most time-consuming sections in the finite DMRG sweeps,i.e.,the diagonalization of superblock and the truncation of subblock,we optimize our previous hybrid algorithm to achieve better performance.For the former,we adopt OpenMP application programming interface on CPU and use our own subroutines with higher bandwidth on GPU.For the later,we use GPU to accelerate matrix and vector operations involving the reduced density matrix.Applying the parallel scheme to the Hubbard model with next-nearest hopping on the 4-leg ladder,we compute the ground state of the system and obtain the charge stripe pattern which is usually observed in high temperature superconductors.Based on simulations with different numbers of DMRG kept states,we show significant performance improvement and computational time reduction with the optimized parallel algorithm.Our hybrid parallel strategy with superiority in solving the ground state of quasi-two dimensional lattices is also expected to be useful for other DMRG applications with large numbers of kept states,e.g.,the time dependent DMRG algorithms.
Many-body localization (MBL) describes a quantum phase where an isolated interacting system subject to sufficient disorder displays non-ergodic behavior, evading thermal equilibrium that occurs under its own dynamics. Previously, the thermalization-MBL transition has been largely characterized with the growth of disorder. Here, we explore a new axis, reporting on an energy resolved MBL transition using a 19-qubit programmable superconducting processor, which enables precise control and flexibility of both disorder strength and initial state preparations. We observe that the onset of localization occurs at different disorder strengths, with distinguishable energy scales, by measuring time-evolved observables and many-body wavefunctions related quantities. Our results open avenues for the experimental exploration of many-body mobility edges in MBL systems, whose existence is widely debated due to system size finiteness, and where exact simulations in classical computers become unfeasible.
Topological properties are associated with nonlocal entanglement and global properties. On the other hand, in some topological systems, it has been shown that quasilocal operators detect topological transitions. We show in this work that in the case of noninteracting long-range symmetry-protected topological models, energy bonds signal topological transitions. Interestingly, we also find that they display some signatures at the Berezinskii-Kosterlitz-Thouless transition that occurs in a spin chain with first and second neighbor interactions, if we consider the first excited state instead of the ground state of the system. Moreover, we show that the ground-state topological transition in the spin Kitaev model in a honeycomb lattice, which displays topological long-range order, is also detected by the energy bond correlator. Despite the model being interacting, in the ground state it reduces to a noninteracting model. Even for the spin-liquid phase of the two-dimensional Heisenberg model with first and second neighbor interactions, where the system has true long-range entanglement and topological order, the local bonds do signal the topological phase transition.
The existence of many-body mobility edges in closed quantum systems has been the focus of intense debate after the emergence of the description of the many-body localization phenomenon. Here we propose that this issue can be settled in experiments by investigating the time evolution of local degrees of freedom, tailored for specific energies and initial states. An interacting model of spinless fermions with exponentially long-ranged tunneling amplitudes, whose noninteracting version is known to display single-particle mobility edges, is used as the starting point upon which nearest-neighbor interactions are included. We verify the manifestation of many-body mobility edges by using numerous probes, suggesting that one cannot explain their appearance as merely being a result of finite-size effects. Lastly, our scheme of following the quantum time evolution at different energies is generic and can be promptly used in a variety of models.
Density matrix renormalization group (DMRG), as a numerical method of solving the ground state of one-dimensional strongly-correlated lattice model with very high accuracy, requires expensive computational and memory cost when applied to two- and quasi-two-dimensional problems. The number of DMRG kept states is generally very large to achieve a reliable accuracy for these applications, which results in numerous matrix and vector operations and unbearably consuming time in the absence of the proper parallelization. However, due to its sequential nature, the parallelization of DMRG algorithm is usually not straightforward. In this work, we propose a new hybrid parallelization strategy for the DMRG method. It takes advantage of the computing capability of both central processing unit (CPU) and graphics processing unit (GPU) of the computer. In order to achieve as many as DMRG kept states within a limited GPU memory, we adopt the four-block formulation of the Hamiltonian rather than the two-block formulation. The later consumes much more memories, which has been used in another pioneer work on the hybrid parallelization of the DMRG algorithm, and only a small number of DMRG kept states are available. Our parallel strategy focuses on the diagonalization of the Hamiltonian, which is the most time-consuming part of the whole DMRG procedure. A hybrid parallelization strategy of diagonalization method is implemented, in which the required data for diagonalization are distributed on both the host and GPU memory, and the data exchange between them is negligible in our data partitioning scheme. The matrix operations are also shared on both CPU and GPU when the Hamiltonian acts on a wave function, while the distribution of these operations is determined by a load balancing strategy. Taking fermionic Hubbard model for example, we examine the running performance of the hybrid parallelization strategy with different DMRG kept states and provide corresponding performance benchmark. On a 4-leg ladder, we employ the conserved quantities with U(1) symmetry of the model and a good-quantum number based task scheduling to further reduce the GPU memory cost. We manage to obtain a moderate speedup of the hybrid parallelization for a wide range of DMRG kept states. In our example, the ground state energy with high accuracy is obtained by the extrapolation of the results, with different numbers of states kept, and we show charge stripes which are usually experimentally observed in high-temperature superconductors. In this case, we keep 10(4) DMRG states and the GPU memory cost is less than 12 Gigabytes.
Superconducting circuits have emerged as a powerful platform of quantum simulation, especially for emulating the dynamics of quantum many-body systems, because of their tunable interaction, long coherence time, and high-precision control. Here in experiments, we construct a Bose-Hubbard ladder with a ladder array of 20 qubits on a 24-qubit superconducting processor. We investigate theoretically and demonstrate experimentally the dynamics of single- and double-excitation states with distinct behaviors, indicating the uniqueness of the Bose-Hubbard ladder. We observe the linear propagation of photons in the single-excitation case, satisfying the Lieb-Robinson bounds. The double-excitation state, initially placed at the edge, localizes; while placed in the bulk, it splits into two single-excitation modes spreading linearly toward two boundaries, respectively. Remarkably, these phenomena, studied both theoretically and numerically as unique properties of the Bose-Hubbard ladder, are represented coherently by pairs of controllable qubits in experiments. Our results show that collective excitations, as a single mode, are not free. This work paves the way to simulation of exotic logic particles by subtly encoding physical qubits and exploration of rich physics by superconducting circuits.
Pairing in superconductors occurs in a variety of channels and can be produced by various mechanisms. Here, we show that, in the presence of strong correlations, a novel singlet-pair superconducting phase can occur in ladder geometries with the fermions in the pairs residing on different sides of a Mott insulating stripe. The antiferromagnet correlations in the Mott stripe provide the pairing "glue" in such a phase. We study, using the density matrix renormalization group method, the ground state of four-leg t-J ladders with Mott insulating stripes in the inner two legs. Pairing and superconductivity are revealed by the presence of negative binding energies and by algebraically decaying interleg singlet-pair correlations, respectively.
We use numerically unbiased methods to show that the one-dimensional Hubbard model with periodically distributed on-site interactions already contains the minimal ingredients to display the phenomenon of magnetoresistance; i.e., by applying an external magnetic field, a dramatic enhancement on the charge transport is achieved. We reach this conclusion based on the computation of the Drude weight and of the single-particle density of states, applying twisted boundary condition averaging to reduce finite-size effects. The known picture that describes the giant magnetoresistance, by interpreting the scattering amplitudes of parallel or antiparallel polarized currents with local magnetizations, is obtained without having to resort to different entities; itinerant and localized charges are indistinguishable.