Simulating Quantum Turbulence with Matrix Product States

TL;DR

This paper introduces a matrix product state (MPS) method for simulating quantum turbulence governed by the Gross-Pitaevskii equation, significantly reducing computational resources and enabling the study of larger, more complex turbulent quantum systems.

Contribution

The authors develop and benchmark an MPS-based solver for the GP equation, demonstrating efficient wavefunction compression and accurate reproduction of turbulence dynamics, surpassing traditional numerical methods in scalability.

Findings

Memory usage reduced by 10x to over 10,000x compared to DNS.

Successfully captures vortex dynamics and Kelvin wave propagation.

Reproduces energy spectra and correlation functions accurately.

Abstract

Quantum turbulence spans length scales from the system size $L$ to the healing length $\xi$, making direct numerical simulations (DNS) of the Gross-Pitaevskii (GP) equation computationally expensive when $L \gg \xi$. We present a matrix product state (MPS) solver for the GP equation that efficiently compresses the wavefunction by truncating weak interlength-scale correlations. This approach reduces memory usage by factors ranging from 10x to over 10,000x compared to DNS. We benchmark our approach on nonlinear excitations, namely dark solitons (1D) and quantized vortices (2D, 3D), capturing key dynamics such as Kelvin wave propagation and vortex ring emission in the case of vortex line reconnection. For turbulent states composed of multiple nonlinear excitations, we find that the memory compression of the MPS representation is directly proportional to the soliton or vortex densities. We also accurately reproduce established results from two-point correlation functions and energy spectra, where we recover the incompressible kinetic energy spectrum with little memory overhead. These results demonstrate the representative capabilities of the MPS ansatz for quantum turbulence and pave the way for studying this nonequilibrium state using previously-prohibited system sizes to uncover novel physics.