There is, I think, something ethereal about i —the square root of minus one. I remember first hearing about it at school. It seemed an odd beast at that time—an intruder hovering on the edge of reality.

Usually familiarity dulls this sense of the bizarre, but in the case of i it was the reverse: over the years the sense of its surreal nature intensified. It seemed that it was impossible to write mathematics that described the real world in …

I and i

[신간의 별자리x] 우리/미술, 그리고 ‘슬픔의 박물관’

Recent interest in aspects common to quantum information and condensed matter has prompted a flurry of activity at the border of these disciplines that were far distant until a few years ago. Numerous interesting questions have been addressed so far. Here an important part of this field, the properties of the entanglement in many-body systems, are reviewed. The zero and finite temperature properties of entanglement in interacting spin, fermion, and boson model systems are discussed. Both bipartite and multipartite entanglement will be considered. In equilibrium entanglement is shown tightly connected to the characteristics of the phase diagram. The behavior of entanglement can be related, via certain witnesses, to thermodynamic quantities thus offering interesting possibilities for an experimental test. Out of equilibrium entangled states are generated and manipulated by means of many-body Hamiltonians.

/pdf/entanglement-in-many-body-systems-sqpatuxt14.pdf

Entanglement in many-body systems

The density-matrix renormalization group method (DMRG) has established itself over the last decade as the leading method for the simulation of the statics and dynamics of one-dimensional strongly correlated quantum lattice systems. In the further development of the method, the realization that DMRG operates on a highly interesting class of quantum states, so-called matrix product states (MPS), has allowed a much deeper understanding of the inner structure of the DMRG method, its further potential and its limitations. In this paper, I want to give a detailed exposition of current DMRG thinking in the MPS language in order to make the advisable implementation of the family of DMRG algorithms in exclusively MPS terms transparent. I then move on to discuss some directions of potentially fruitful further algorithmic development: while DMRG is a very mature method by now, I still see potential for further improvements, as exemplified by a number of recently introduced algorithms.

/pdf/the-density-matrix-renormalization-group-in-the-age-of-6718dr7b3l.pdf

The density-matrix renormalization group in the age of matrix product states

We give a classification of gapped quantum phases of one-dimensional systems in the framework of matrix product states (MPS) and their associated parent Hamiltonians, for systems with unique as well as degenerate ground states and in both the absence and the presence of symmetries. We find that without symmetries, all systems are in the same phase, up to accidental ground-state degeneracies. If symmetries are imposed, phases without symmetry breaking (i.e., with unique ground states) are classified by the cohomology classes of the symmetry group, that is, the equivalence classes of its projective representations, a result first derived by Chen, Gu, and Wen [Phys. Rev. B 83, 035107 (2011)]. For phases with symmetry breaking (i.e., degenerate ground states), we find that the symmetry consists of two parts, one of which acts by permuting the ground states, while the other acts on individual ground states, and phases are labeled by both the permutation action of the former and the cohomology class of the latter. Using projected entangled pair states (PEPS), we subsequently extend our framework to the classification of two-dimensional phases in the neighborhood of a number of important cases, in particular, systems with unique ground states, degenerate ground states with a local order parameter, and topological order. We also show that in two dimensions, imposing symmetries does not constrain the phase diagram in the same way it does in one dimension. As a central tool, we introduce the isometric form, a normal form for MPS and PEPS, which is a renormalization fixed point. Transforming a state to its isometric form does not change the phase, and thus we can focus on to the classification of isometric forms.

/pdf/classifying-quantum-phases-using-matrix-product-states-and-38i1xgwmgs.pdf

Classifying quantum phases using matrix product states and projected entangled pair states

We investigate the relation between the scaling of block entropies and the efficient simulability by matrix product states (MPSs) and clarify the connection both for von Neumann and Renyi entropies. Most notably, even states obeying a strict area law for the von Neumann entropy are not necessarily approximable by MPSs. We apply these results to illustrate that quantum computers might outperform classical computers in simulating the time evolution of quantum systems, even for completely translational invariant systems subject to a time-independent Hamiltonian.

/pdf/entropy-scaling-and-simulability-by-matrix-product-states-3oj4c70w7x.pdf

Entropy scaling and simulability by matrix product states.

PEPS as ground states: Degeneracy and topology

Using arguments from computational complexity theory, fundamental limitations are found for how efficient it is to calculate the ground-state energy of many-electron systems using density functional theory. One of the central problems in quantum mechanics is to determine the ground-state properties of a system of electrons interacting through the Coulomb potential. Since its introduction1,2, density functional theory has become the most widely used and successful method for simulating systems of interacting electrons. Here, we show that the field of computational complexity imposes fundamental limitations on density functional theory. In particular, if the associated ‘universal functional’ could be found efficiently, this would imply that any problem in the computational complexity class Quantum Merlin Arthur could be solved efficiently. Quantum Merlin Arthur is the quantum version of the class NP and thus any problem in NP could be solved in polynomial time. This is considered highly unlikely. Our result follows from the fact that finding the ground-state energy of the Hubbard model in an external magnetic field is a hard problem even for a quantum computer, but, given the universal functional, it can be computed efficiently using density functional theory. This work illustrates how the field of quantum computing could be useful even if quantum computers were never built.

https://www.univie.ac.at/qfp/publications3/pdffiles/Computational%20complexity%20of%20interacting%20electrons%20and%20fundamental%20limitations%20of%20density%20functional%20theory.pdf

Computational complexity of interacting electrons and fundamental limitations of density functional theory

We determine the computational power of preparing projected entangled pair states (PEPS), as well as the complexity of classically simulating them, and generally the complexity of contracting tensor networks. While creating PEPS allows us to solve $PP$ problems, the latter two tasks are both proven to be $#P$-complete. We further show how PEPS can be used to approximate ground states of gapped Hamiltonians and that creating them is easier than creating arbitrary PEPS. The main tool for our proofs is a duality between PEPS and postselection which allows us to use existing results from quantum complexity.

/pdf/computational-complexity-of-projected-entangled-pair-states-p0941cdxq6.pdf

Norbert Schuch

Papers

Classifying quantum phases using matrix product states and projected entangled pair states

Entropy scaling and simulability by matrix product states.

PEPS as ground states: Degeneracy and topology

Computational complexity of interacting electrons and fundamental limitations of density functional theory

Computational complexity of projected entangled pair states.