High order non-unitary split-step decomposition of unitary operators

We propose a high order numerical decomposition of exponentials of hermitean operators in terms of a product of exponentials of simple terms, following an idea which has been pioneered by M. Suzuki, however implementing it for complex coefficients. We outline a convenient fourth order formula which can be written compactly for arbitrary number of noncommuting terms in the Hamiltonian and which is superiour to the optimal formula with real coefficients, both in complexity and accuracy. We show asymptotic stability of our method for sufficiently small time step and demonstrate its efficiency and accuracy in different numerical models.Comment: 10 pages, 4 figures (5 eps files) Submitted to J. of Phys. A: Math. Ge

Quantum phase transition in a far from equilibrium steady state of XY spin chain

Using quantization in the Fock space of operators we compute the non-equilibrium steady state in an open Heisenberg XY spin 1/2 chain of finite but large size coupled to Markovian baths at its ends. Numerical and theoretical evidence is given for a far from equilibrium quantum phase transition with spontaneous emergence of long-range order in spin-spin correlation functions, characterized by a transition from saturation to linear growth with the size of the entanglement entropy in operator space.Comment: 4 pages (in RevTex) with 5 figures - essentially identical with a published versio

Time-dependent variational principle for quantum lattices

We develop a new algorithm based on the time-dependent variational principle applied to matrix product states to efficiently simulate the real-and imaginary-time dynamics for infinite one-dimensional quantum lattices. This procedure (i) is argued to be optimal, (ii) does not rely on the Trotter decomposition and thus has no Trotter error, (iii) preserves all symmetries and conservation laws, and (iv) has low computational complexity. The algorithm is illustrated by using both an imaginary-time and a real-time example

Loschmidt echoes in two-body random matrix ensembles

Fidelity decay is studied for quantum many-body systems with a dominant independent particle Hamiltonian resulting e.g. from a mean field theory with a weak two-body interaction. The diagonal terms of the interaction are included in the unperturbed Hamiltonian, while the off-diagonal terms constitute the perturbation that distorts the echo. We give the linear response solution for this problem in a random matrix framework. While the ensemble average shows no surprising behavior, we find that the typical ensemble member as represented by the median displays a very slow fidelity decay known as ``freeze''. Numerical calculations confirm this result and show, that the ground state even on average displays the freeze. This may contribute to explanation of the ``unreasonable'' success of mean field theories.Comment: 9 pages, 5 figures (6 eps files), RevTex; v2: slight modifications following referees' suggestion

Entanglement as a resource in adiabatic quantum optimization

We explore the role of entanglement in adiabatic quantum optimization by performing approximate simulations of the real-time evolution of a quantum system while limiting the amount of entanglement. To classically simulate the time evolution of the system with a limited amount of entanglement, we represent the quantum state using matrix-product states and projected entangledpair states. We show that the probability of finding the ground state of an Ising spin glass on either a planar or non-planar two-dimensional graph increases rapidly as the amount of entanglement in the state is increased. Furthermore, we propose evolution in complex time as a way to improve simulated adiabatic evolution and mimic the effects of thermal cooling of the quantum annealer