NESSi 2.0: The Non-Equilibrium Systems Simulation package version 2.0

TL;DR

The paper introduces NESSi 2.0, an enhanced simulation package for nonequilibrium Green's functions that employs memory truncation techniques to enable longer and more efficient quantum many-body dynamics simulations.

Contribution

It extends NESSi by implementing memory truncation and steady-state functionalities, improving computational efficiency and enabling longer simulation times.

Findings

Memory truncation reduces computational complexity from cubic to linear in the number of timesteps.

Memory requirement is decreased from quadratic to constant with respect to the cutoff.

Steady-state functionalities allow modeling of transport and prethermal states.

Abstract

Nonequilibrium Green's functions provide a powerful framework for studying quantum many-body dynamics including the laser-induced dynamics in solids. The Non-Equilibrium Systems Simulation package (NESSi) offers an efficient platform for such simulations, ranging from perturbative approaches like nonequilibrium $GW$ to nonequilibrium dynamical mean-field theory. However, simulations based on nonequilibrium Green's functions become computationally demanding when the dynamics span a large temporal range, such as from sub-femtosecond electron dynamics to the picosecond dynamics of collective modes. Due to the memory integral in the Kadanoff-Baym equations, which serve as equations of motion for nonequilibrium Green's functions, the computational cost scales as $\mathcal{O}(N_t^3)$ with the number of timesteps $N_t$, and the memory requirement scales as $\mathcal{O}(N_t^2)$. In this work, we extend NESSi by incorporating techniques that aim to overcome this bottleneck: (i) By truncating the memory integrals in the KBE to a maximum of $N_c$ timesteps, the computational complexity is reduced to $\mathcal{O}(N_tN_c^2)$, and the memory requirement to $\mathcal{O}(N_c^2)$. Provided that the results converge with respect to the cutoff $N_c$, memory truncation allows to extend the simulations to significantly longer times. (ii) We introduce functionalities to describe nonequilibrium steady states, i.e. time-translationally invariant nonequilibrium states. Such states are relevant for transport settings, and they provide an approximate description of slowly evolving (prethermal) nonequilibrium states.