Theory Seminar: Variational Time Evolution: A Clock-based approach

Stavros Efthymiou (MPQ Theory Department)
I will present a variational approach for unitary time evolution of many-body systems, in which time is treated as an additional quantum degree of freedom and the problem can be viewed as a ground state optimization in a larger Hilbert space.

Stavros Efthymiou (MPQ Theory Department)
MPQ, Seminar Room B2.46
Wed, 6. November 2019, 11:30 am

Abstract:

I will present a variational approach for unitary time evolution of many-body systems, in which time is treated as an additional quantum degree of freedom and the problem can be viewed as a ground state optimization in a larger Hilbert space. I will start with a brief introduction of methods that motivated this idea, particularly the time-dependent Variational Principle (TDVP) and time-dependent Variational Monte Carlo (t-VMC), and I will show how time evolution can be expressed as a minimization problem. This minimization will turn out to be related to the ground state of the "Clock Hamiltonian", a construction first introduced by Feynman. I will then describe our attempts to implement the method numerically and show some preliminary results on simple (and small!) systems.