Universal limits of nonlinear measure redistribution processes and their applications

TL;DR

This paper investigates the fundamental limits of nonlinear measure redistribution processes, proposing a characteristic-function approach that enables exact asymptotic analysis and positivity preservation, with applications in quantum and statistical physics.

Contribution

It introduces a novel characteristic-function method to analyze nonlinear measure redistribution, overcoming sign problems and providing exact large-time behavior results.

Findings

Exact large-time limits can be obtained for many initial conditions.

The characteristic-function approach preserves positivity.

The method applies to quantum and classical measure dynamics.

Abstract

Deriving the time evolution of a distribution of probability (or a probability density matrix) is a problem encountered frequently in a variety of situations: for physical time, it could be a kinetic reaction study, while identifying time with the number of computational steps gives a typical picture of algorithms routinely used in quantum impurity solvers, density functional theory, etc. Using a truncation scheme for the expansion of the exact quantity is necessary due to constraints of the numerical implementation. However, this leads in turn to serious complications such as the Fermion Sign Problem (essentially, density or weights will become negative). By integrating angular degrees of freedom and reducing the dynamics to the radial component, the time evolution is reformulated as a nonlinear integral transform of the distribution function. A canonical decomposition into orthogonal polynomials leads back to the original sign problem, but using a characteristic-function representation allows to extract the asymptotic behavior, and gives an exact large-time limit, for many initial conditions, with guaranteed positivity.