Driven-dissipative quantum Monte Carlo method for open quantum systems

We develop a real-time full configuration-interaction quantum Monte Carlo approach to model driven-dissipative open quantum systems with Markovian system-bath coupling. The method enables stochastic sampling of the Liouville–von Neumann time evolution of the density matrix thanks to a massively parallel algorithm, thus providing estimates of observables on the nonequilibrium steady state. We present the underlying theory and introduce an initiator technique and importance sampling to reduce the statistical error. Finally, we demonstrate the efficiency of our approach by applying it to the driven-dissipative two-dimensional XYZ spin-1/2 model on a lattice.

Quantum Monte Carlo approach to the non-equilibrium steady state of open quantum systems

Alexandra Nagy

Many-body open quantum systems are exposed to an essentially uncontrollable environment that acts as a source of decoherence and dissipation. As the exact treatment of such models is generally unfeasible, it is favourable to formulate an approximate description by means of the dynamics of the reduced density operator of the system. When studying models with a weak coupling to a memoryless environment, the existence of such solution is granted and the reduced dynamics is governed by the Lindblad quantum master equation. In recent years, open quantum systems have evolved into a major field of studies. Focus of these studies are the characterization of emergent phenomena and dissipative phase transitions, as well as the ongoing debate about whether quantum computing schemes are still hard to simulate classically --- and thus achieve quantum supremacy --- when in presence of some degree of noise-induced decoherence. However, the challenge posed by this task lies in the complexity of the density matrix that increases exponentially with the system size, and the quest for efficient numerical methods is a research field that is still in its infancy. Here, we first develop a real-time full configuration interaction quantum Monte Carlo technique that stems from a class of methods generally known as projector Monte Carlo. The approach enables the stochastic sampling of the Lindblad time evolution of the density matrix thanks to a massively parallel algorithm, thus providing estimates of observables on the non-equilibrium steady state. We present the underlying theory and introduce an initiator technique and importance sampling to reduce statistical error. We demonstrate the efficiency of the approach by applying it to the dissipative two-dimensional XYZ spin-1/2 model on a lattice. As the importance sampling of projector approaches is often combined with variational results, we then introduce a novel method that is based on the variational Monte Carlo methods and on a neural network representation of the density matrix. Thanks to the stochastic reconfiguration scheme, the application of the variational principle is translated into the actual integration of the Lindblad quantum master equation. We test the effectiveness of the method by modeling the steady state of the dissipative two-dimensional XYZ spin-1/2 model through a dissipative phase transition, and also the real-time dynamics of the dissipative Ising model. In addition, we discuss the application of the developed methods and the open questions of the field.

EPFL2020

Matrix-product-operator approach to the nonequilibrium steady state of driven-dissipative quantum arrays

Hugo Pierre Alexandre Flayac, Eduardo Carlo Mascarenhas Moraes, Vincenzo Savona

We develop a numerical procedure to efficiently model the nonequilibrium steady state of one-dimensional arrays of open quantum systems based on a matrix-product operator ansatz for the density matrix. The procedure searches for the null eigenvalue of the Liouvillian superoperator by sweeping along the system while carrying out a partial diagonalization of the single-site stationary problem. It bears full analogy to the density-matrix renormalization-group approach to the ground state of isolated systems, and its numerical complexity scales as a power law with the bond dimension. The method brings considerable advantage when compared to the integration of the time-dependent problem via Trotter decomposition, as it can address arbitrarily long-ranged couplings. Additionally, it ensures numerical stability in the case of weakly dissipative systems thanks to a slow tuning of the dissipation rates along the sweeps. We have tested the method on a driven-dissipative spin chain, under various assumptions for the Hamiltonian, drive, and dissipation parameters, and compared the results to those obtained both by Trotter dynamics and Monte Carlo wave function methods. Accurate and numerically stable convergence was always achieved when applying the method to systems with a gapped Liouvillian and a nondegenerate steady state.

American Physical Society2015

Quantum Monte Carlo approach to the non-equilibrium steady state of open quantum systems

Alexandra Nagy

EPFL2020