Project

Tensor networks and the simulation of strongly-correlated quantum many-body physics

Code
3E011417
Duration
01 October 2017 → 31 October 2020
Funding
Research Foundation - Flanders (FWO)
Research disciplines
No data available
Keywords
Tensor networks
 
Project description

In recent years, more and more experiments were performed that bring quantum-mechanical

effects to the macroscopic world. These experimental breakthroughs demand a theoretical

understanding of how large quantum systems behave physically. The area of quantum many-body

physics tries to provide such an understanding, but is faced with a serious difficulty: the complexity

of these problems scales heavily with the size of the systems that are investigated. It appears that

the number of parameters that show up in these equations is just too large to handle with any

computer.

So a physicist has to make approximations. On the one hand, these approximations cannot be too

crude so they are still able to catch the important physical properties of the system. On the other

hand, they must reduce the complexity of the system enough, so a computer can provide a

solution. In the last decade, through the discovery of a new conceptual framework for

understanding many-body systems, physicists have succeeded in finding this fine balance and have

simulated an impressive range of many-body phenomena.

This project picks in on these promising lines of research by providing advanced computational

algorithms that focus on the dynamical properties of these quantum systems. This will allow us to

simulate phenomena that have been observed in experiments, but continue to defy a theoretical

understanding. In this way, we make a next step forward in understanding quantum many-body

physics in a unified way.