Quantum-Number Projected Path-Integral Renormalization Group method

 

Symmetry plays a crucial role in understanding quantum many-body systems. For example, the Hubbard model preserves total spin, total momentum, and some geometrical symmetries on a lattice, by which we can classify low-energy eigenstates and can elucidate the nature of low-energy phenomena like excitation spectra and spectroscopic properties.

 

For strongly correlated electron systems, numerical approaches are an indispensable tool for their studies and various methods such as quantum Monte Carlo methods and Density Matrix Renormalization Group method have been presented, while except exact diagonalization method whose tractable system size is severely limited, these methods cannot fully take an advantage of symmetry and excitation spectra have not been well explored.

 

Recently we have developed a quantum-number projection technique [1], by which advantage of symmetry can be fully extracted. For instance, we can handle wave functions with definite and exact symmetries and lowest energy state with different symmetries can be treated in the same footing of ground state. Moreover we have presented its implementation [1] to the path-integral renormalization group (PIRG) method [2] and succeeded in extremely enlarging the feasibility of the PIRG.

 

The quantum-number projection method can pick up a component with required symmetries from symmetry broken wave functions. In the Hubbard-type models, symmetries such as spin and momentum have a significant role in the low-energy states, while explicit construction of symmetry imposed wave function is quite complicated for a large number of electrons. However, the quantum-number projection technique enables us to easily handle symmetry-imposed wave function in a compact and numerically tractable form by integral or summation [1]. For instance, for spin symmetry, we can consider spin projection, which is represented by one-dimensional integral over Euler's angle in spin space. The present spin projection is a counterpart of angular momentum projection, which is often used in nuclear many-body problem. The momentum projection is also simply given from the superposition of spatially translated basis functions. Geometrical symmetry on a lattice such as the inversion and rotation symmetries is also considered in the similar way. By this method we can exactly treat spin, momentum and other quantum numbers to investigate the Hubbard-type models.

 

Moreover this method is well harmonized with the PIRG [2]. In this method, the wave function is expressed by a linear combination of L basis states which are deliberately optimized by the auxiliary-field Quantum Monte Carlo technique [2], while the symmetries are not retained in each basis state in general because the numerically manageable number of the basis states, L, is limited. Therefore by applying the quantum-number projection onto each basis state, we can implement it into the PIRG. Consequently we can exactly treat the symmetry and extract the state with specified quantum numbers by the PIRG. Concerning its procedure for quantum-number projection and PIRG process, we have proposed two ways of implementing quantum-number projection into the PIRG [1]. One way is to carry out quantum-number projection afterwards for the already obtained PIRG wave function (PIRG+QP). Other is to carry out the PIRG by using quantum-number projected basis states (QP-PIRG). By both methods, the ground state can be efficiently extracted by specifying the quantum number with higher accuracy than the PIRG without projection.

Comparing these two methods, the latter method can give more accurate eigenenergy than the former does.

 

By this extension of the PIRG, we have made following essential progresses: (1) Precision of the numerical calculation is substantially improved. (2) The quantum number of the ground state is exactly determined. (3) The extended PIRG by the quantum-number projection can handle excited states and their spectroscopic properties in addition to the ground state.

 

As a numerical demonstration, we investigate the standard Hubbard model on two-dimensional square lattice. We can obtain an excited state with S=1 and k=(p, p) in addition to the ground state with S=0 and k=(0,0) for the 6x6 half-filled lattice with U/t=4 as shown in Fig. 1. The ground state energy by the QP-PIRG is very close to one by the Monte Carlo method and the QP-PIRG can obtain the excited energy in addition to the ground state energy. We also test the QP-PIRG in the case of t-t’ Hubbard model with large geometrical frustration effect and with severe minus sign problems in term of Monte Carlo methods. We consider the half-filled system on 4 by 4 lattice with U/t=5.7 and t'=0.5 and confirmed that the total energy difference between the present result and exact one is very small and is less than 0.01 [1].

 

Recently by using the PIRG method, the non-magnetic insulator (NMI) phase has been found near the Mott transition for relatively large t' [4].

As the present extended PIRG can explicitly handle quantum numbers, it will be useful to clarify its nature. It is also worth noting that the present quantum-number projection technique and the PIRG method work well irrespective of the details of the considered system. Therefore the present approach will work for other systems in addition to Hubbard-type models.

 

 

References

 

[1] T. Mizusaki and M.Imada, Phys. Rev. B69, 125110 (2004).

[2] M. Imada and T. Kashima, J. Phys. Soc. Jpn. 69, 2723 (2000);

   T. Kashima and M. Imada, J. Phys. Soc. Jpn. 70, 2287 (2001).

[3] M. Imada, T. Mizusaki, S. Watanabe, cond-mat/0307022.

[4] T. Kashima and M. Imada, J. Phys. Soc. Jpn., 70,3052 (2001); H. Morita, S. Watanabe and M. Imada, J. Phys. Soc. Jpn., 71, 2109 (2002),

Y. Noda and M. Imada, Phys. Rev. Lett., 89, 176803 (2002).

 

Authors

Takahiro Mizusaki(a)  and Masatoshi Imada

(a)  Institute of Natural Sciences, Senshu University

 

Fig. 1:

 

We demonstrate the efficiency of the QP-PIRG [1] in the case of the 2D half-filled Hubbard model with 6 by 6 square lattice and the periodic boundary condition. The parameters are at t=1, t'=0 and U=4. The energy is obtained by the extrapolation of the energy to the zero energy variance [2]. The extrapolations of the ground state (S=0, k=(0,0)) and first excited state (S=1,k=(p,p)) energies are shown. Although exact ground state energy is not available, the ground-state energy of Monte Carlo calculation is shown by open diamond at zero variance with its statistical error bar. The ground state energy by the QP-PIRG is within the error-bar of the Monte Carlo calculation.