No description available.

In this thesis we examine methods for measuring entanglement entropy in spin-1/2 Heisenberg systems using quantum Monte Carlo in the valence bond basis. We begin by presenting the quantum Monte Carlo techniques used in this research. We then use these techniques to directly compare the recently proposed valence bond entanglement entropy to the standard definition of entanglement entropy: the von Neumann entanglement entropy. We find that the valence bond entanglement entropy does not give a bound on the von Neumann entanglement entropy, and that it exhibits a multiplicative logarithmic correction to the area law that is not present in the scaling of the von Neumann entanglement entropy. We then present a method to measure higher orders of the generalized Renyi entanglement entropies using valence bond quantum Monte Carlo, and show results for the second Renyi entropy. We find the results converge to the exact results for one dimensional Heisenberg spin-1/2 chains, and see that the scaling of the second Renyi entropy follows an area law in the two dimensional Heisenberg ground state.

In this thesis we examine methods for measuring entanglement entropy in spin-1/2 Heisenberg systems using quantum Monte Carlo in the valence bond basis. We begin by presenting the quantum Monte Carlo techniques used in this research. We then use these techniques to directly compare the recently proposed valence bond entanglement entropy to the standard definition of entanglement entropy: the von Neumann entanglement entropy. We find that the valence bond entanglement entropy does not give a bound on the von Neumann entanglement entropy, and that it exhibits a multiplicative logarithmic correction to the area law that is not present in the scaling of the von Neumann entanglement entropy. We then present a method to measure higher orders of the generalized Renyi entanglement entropies using valence bond quantum Monte Carlo, and show results for the second Renyi entropy. We find the results converge to the exact results for one dimensional Heisenberg spin-1/2 chains, and see that the scaling of the second Renyi entropy follows an area law in the two dimensional Heisenberg ground state.

No description available.

No description available.

Quantum Monte Carlo (QMC) methods can yield highly accurate energies for correlated quantum systems. QMC calculations based on many-body wave functions are considerably more accurate than density functional theory methods, and their accuracy rivals that of the most sophisticated quantum chemistry methods. This thesis is concerned with the development of improved wave function forms and their use in performing highly-accurate quantum Monte Carlo calculations. All-electron variational and diffusion Monte Carlo (VMC and DMC) calculations are performed for the first-row atoms and singly-positive ions. Over 98% of the correlation energy is retrieved at the VMC level and over 99% at the DMC level for all the atoms and ions. Their first ionization potentials are calculated within chemical accuracy. Scalar relativistic corrections to the energies, mass-polarization terms, and one- and two-electron expectation values are also evaluated. A form for the electron and intracule densities is presented and fits to this form are performed. Typical Jastrow factors used in quantum Monte Carlo calculations comprise electron-electron, electron-nucleus and electron-electron-nucleus terms. A general Jastrow factor capable of correlating an arbitrary of number of electrons and nuclei, and including anisotropy is outlined. Terms that depend on the relative orientation of electrons are also introduced and applied. This Jastrow factor is applied to electron gases, atoms and molecules and is found to give significant improvement at both VMC and DMC levels. Similar generalizations to backflow transformations will allow useful additional variational freedom in the wave function. In particular, the use of different backflow functions for different orbitals is expected to be important in systems where the orbitals are qualitatively different. The modifications to the code necessary to accommodate orbital-dependent backflow functions are described and some systems in which they are expected to be important are suggested.

This thesis is concerned with the development of a Projector Quantum Monte Carlo method for non-linear wavefunction ansatzes and its application to strongly correlated materials. This new approach is partially inspired by a prior application of the Full Configuration Interaction Quantum Monte Carlo (FCIQMC) method to the three-band (p-d) Hubbard model. Through repeated stochastic application of a projector FCIQMC projects out a stochastic description of the Full Configuration Interaction (FCI) ground state wavefunction, a linear combination of Slater determinants spanning the full Hilbert space. The study of the p-d Hubbard model demonstrates that the nature of this FCI expansion is profoundly affected by the choice of single-particle basis. In a counterintuitive manner, the effectiveness of a one-particle basis to produce a sparse, compact and rapidly converging FCI expansion is not necessarily paralleled by its ability to describe the physics of the system within a single determinant. The results suggest that with an appropriate basis, single-reference quantum chemical approaches may be able to describe many-body wavefunctions of strongly correlated materials. Furthermore, this thesis presents a reformulation of the projected imaginary time evolution of FCIQMC as a Lagrangian minimisation. This naturally allows for the optimisation of polynomial complex wavefunction ansatzes with a polynomial rather than exponential scaling with system size. The proposed approach blurs the line between traditional Variational and Projector Quantum Monte Carlo approaches whilst involving developments from the field of deep-learning neural networks which can be expressed as a modification of the projector. The ability of the developed approach to sample and optimise arbitrary non-linear wavefunctions is demonstrated with several classes of Tensor Network States all of which involve controlled approximations but still retain systematic improvability towards exactness. Thus, by applying the method to strongly-correlated Hubbard models, as well as ab-initio systems, including a fully periodic ab-initio graphene sheet, many-body wavefunctions and their one- and two-body static properties are obtained. The proposed approach can handle and simultaneously optimise large numbers of variational parameters, greatly exceeding those of alternative Variational Monte Carlo approaches.

The work in this thesis is concerned with the application and development of quantum Monte Carlo (QMC) methods. We begin by proposing a technique to maximise the efficiency of the extrapolation of DMC results to zero time step, finding that a relative time step ratio of 1:4 is optimal. We discuss the post-processing of QMC data and the calculation of accurate error bars by reblocking, setting out criteria for the choice of block length. We then quantify the effects of uncertainty in the correlation length on estimated error bars, finding that the frequency of outliers is significantly increased for short runs. We then report QMC calculations of biexciton binding energies in bilayer systems. We have also calculated exciton-exciton interaction potentials, and radial distribution functions for electrons and holes in bound biexcitons. We find a larger region of biexciton stability than other recent work [C. Schindler and R. Zimmermann, Phys. Rev. B 78,045313 (2008)]. We also find that individual excitons retain their identity in bound biexcitons for large layer separations. Finally, we give details of a QMC study of the one-dimensional homogeneous electrongas (1D HEG). We present calculations of the energy, pair correlation function, static structure factor (SSF), and momentum density (MD) for the 1D HEG. We observe peaks in the SSF at even-integer-multiples of the Fermi wave vector, which grow as the coupling is increased. Our MD results show an increase in the effective Fermi wave vector as the interaction strength is raised in the paramagnetic harmonic wire; this appears to be a result of the vanishing difference between the wave functions of the paramagnetic and ferromagnetic systems. We have extracted the Luttinger liquid exponent from our MDs by fitting to data around the Fermi wave vector, finding good agreement between the exponents of the ferromagnetic infinitely-thin and harmonic wires.

Organic conductors are of considerable interest to the condensed matter community. In contrast to conventional metal conductors, these organic materials allow for large variability in their construction giving both quasi-one and two dimensional behavior. Organic superconductors also give useful insight into the properties of general superconductivity as well as insight into the properties of strongly correlated electronic materials. These materials exhibit interesting phenomena like spin-Peierls, antiferromagnetic, and superconducting phases. The aim of this thesis is not only to inform the reader of various studies into organic superconductors but also to advance research into these materials through massively parallel numerical methods. This thesis will cover two studies: a quantum Monte Carlo study on an infinite one-dimensional chain and an exact diagonalization study on a 16-site two-dimensional lattice. These studies will be used to better understand the charge and bond behavior of quasi-one dimensional 1/4illed organic superconductors.

This dissertation describes a theoretical study of strongly correlated electron systems. We present a variational quantum Monte Carlo approach based on matrix-product states, which enables us to naturally extend our work into higher-dimensional tensor-network states as well as to determine the ground state and the low-lying excitations of quasi-onedimensional electron systems. Our results show that the ground state of the quarterilled zigzag electron ladder is expected to exhibit a bond distortion whose pattern is not affected by the electron-electron interaction strength. This dissertation also presents a new method that combines a quantumMonte Carlo technique with a class of tensor-network states. We show that this method can be applied to two-dimensional fermionic or frustrated models that suffer from a sign problem. Monte Carlo sampling over physical states reveals better scaling with the size of matrices under periodic boundary conditions than other types of higher-dimensional tensor-network states, such as projected entangled-pair states, which lead to unfavorable exponential scaling in the matrix size.