Short time evolved wave functions for solving quantum many-body problems

TL;DR

This paper introduces a fourth order positive factorization method for evolving wave functions in quantum many-body systems, achieving highly accurate descriptions of strongly interacting systems like liquid helium without iterative procedures.

Contribution

The work presents a novel fourth order evolution scheme that accurately captures ground states of quantum many-body systems using only a single evolved wave function.

Findings

Accurately describes liquid 4He with a single wave function

Comparable to the best variational results in the literature

Requires knowledge of potential and gradients, no further iterations

Abstract

The exact ground state of a strongly interacting quantum many-body system can be obtained by evolving a trial state with finite overlap with the ground state to infinite imaginary time. In this work, we use a newly discovered fourth order positive factorization scheme which requires knowing both the potential and its gradients. We show that the resultaing fourth order wave function alone, without further iterations, gives an excellent description of strongly interacting quantum systems such as liquid 4He, comparable to the best variational results in the literature.