arXiv subjects

Erez Zohar

Publications and source records attributed to Erez Zohar.

At least 19 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2026

ggpeps: A package for Gauged Gaussian PEPS

Lattice gauge theories are a low-energy regularization of quantum field theories. They are the basis for the development of numerical algorithms that provide insight into the non-perturbative regime of quantum field theories which is difficult to achieve through other methods. We present a python package, ggpeps, implementing gauged Gaussian projected entangled pair states (GGPEPS), specialized to study lattice gauge theories. We give a an overview of the considered systems, describe the GGPEPS ansatz and provide a usage guide for the ggpeps package.

hep-lat↗

arXiv2026

Gaussian continuous tensor network states: short-distance properties and imaginary-time evolution

We study Gaussian continuous tensor network states (GCTNS) - a finitely-parameterized subclass of Gaussian states admitting an interpretation as continuum limits of discrete tensor network states. We show that, at short distance, GCTNS correspond to free Lifshitz vacua, establishing a connection between certain entanglement properties of the two. Two schemes to approximate ground states of (free) bosonic field theories using GCTNS are presented: rational approximants to the exact dispersion relation and Trotterized imaginary-time evolution. We apply them to Klein-Gordon theory and characterize the resulting approximations, identifying the energy scales at which deviations from the target theory appear. These results provide a simple and analytically controlled setting to assess the strengths and limitations of GCTNS as variational ans\"atze for relativistic quantum fields.

hep-th↗

arXiv2025

Algorithmic Aspects of Gauged Gaussian Fermionic PEPS: Gauge Fixing and Translation Invariance

Lattice gauge theories (LGTs) provide a powerful framework for studying non-perturbative phenomena in gauge theories. However, conventional approaches such as Monte Carlo (MC) simulations in imaginary time are limited, as they do not allow real time evolution and suffer from a sign problem in many important cases. Using Gauged Gaussian fermionic projected entangled pair states (GGFPEPS) as a variational ground state ansatz offers an alternative for studying LGTs through a sign-problem-free variational MC. As this method is extended to larger and more complex systems, understanding its numerical behavior becomes essential. While conventional action based MC has been extensively studied, the performance and characteristics of non-action-based MC within the GGFPEPS framework are far less explored. In this work, we investigate these algorithmic aspects, identifying an optimal update size for GGFPEPS-based MC simulations for $\mathbb{Z}_2$ in $2+1$ dimensions. We show that gauge fixing generally slows convergence, and demonstrate that not exploiting the translation-invariance can, in some cases, improve the computational time scaling of error convergence. We expect that these improvements will allow advancing the simulation to larger and more complex systems.

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arXiv2025

Continuum limit of gauged tensor network states

It is well known that all physically relevant states of gauge theories lie in the sectors of the Hilbert space which satisfy the Gauss law. On the lattice, the manifeslty gauge invariant subspace is known to be exactly spanned by gauged tensor networks. In this work, we demonstrate that the continuum limit of certain types of gauged tensor networks is well defined and leads to a new class of states that may be helpful for the non-perturbative study of gauge theories directly in the continuum.

hep-th↗

arXiv2025

T-duality and bosonization as examples of continuum gauging and disentangling

Dualities and duality transformations form a well established methodology in various aspects of quantum many body physics and quantum field theories, allowing one to exploit equivalence between models which may naively seem completely different in order to gain access to further physical regimes, either analytically, numerically or experimentally. Recently, in the context of condensed matter physics and quantum information, it was shown that dualities can be understood very well through a gauging and disentangling procedure that can be represented by a finite depth quantum circuit. In this letter we expand these concepts to the continuum, suggesting them as a way to derive duality transformations in continuum field theories and particle physics, and benchmark the presented ideas through the re-derivation of T-duality and bosonization.

hep-th↗

arXiv2025

Quantum Simulation of non-Abelian Lattice Gauge Theories: a variational approach to $\mathbb{D}_8$

In this work, we address the problem of a resource-efficient formulation of non-Abelian LGTs by focusing on the difficulty of simulating fermionic degrees of freedom and the Hilbert space redundancy. First, we show a procedure that removes the matter and improves the efficiency of the hardware resources. We demonstrate it for the simplest non-Abelian group addressable with this procedure, $\mathbb{D}_8$, both in the cases of one (1D) and two (2D) spatial dimensions. Then, with the objective of running a variational quantum simulation on real quantum hardware, we map the $\mathbb{D}_8$ lattice gauge theory onto qudit systems with local interactions. We propose a variational scheme for the qudit system with a local Hamiltonian, which can be implemented on a universal qudit quantum device as the one developed in $\href{https://doi.org/10.1038/s41567-022-01658-0}{[Nat. Phys. 18, 1053 (2022)]}$. Our results show the effectiveness of the matter-removing procedure, solving the redundancy problem and reducing the amount of quantum resources. This can serve as a way of simulating lattice gauge theories in high spatial dimensions, with non-Abelian gauge groups, and including dynamical fermions.

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arXiv2024

Projected Entangled Pair States for Lattice Gauge Theories with Dynamical Fermions

Lattice gauge theory is an important framework for studying gauge theories that arise in the Standard Model and condensed matter physics. Yet many systems (or regimes of those systems) are difficult to study using conventional techniques, such as action-based Monte Carlo sampling. In this paper, we demonstrate the use of gauged Gaussian projected entangled pair states as an ansatz for a lattice gauge theory involving dynamical physical matter. We study a $\mathbb{Z}_2$ gauge theory on a two dimensional lattice with a single flavor of fermionic matter on each lattice site. For small systems, our results show agreement with results computed by exactly diagonalizing the Hamiltonian, and demonstrate that the approach is computationally feasible for larger system sizes where exact results are unavailable. This is a further step on the road to studying higher dimensions and other gauge groups with manageable computational costs while avoiding the sign problem.

hep-lat↗

arXiv2024

Gauging a superposition of fermionic Gaussian projected entangled pair states to get lattice gauge theory eigenstates

Gauged fermionic projected entangled pair states (GFPEPS) and their Gaussian counterpart (GGFPEPS) are a novel type of lattice gauge theory Ansatz state that combine ideas from the Monte Carlo and tensor network communities. In particular, computation of observables for such states boils down to a Monte Carlo integration over possible gauge field configurations that have probabilities dictated by a fermionic tensor network contraction that accounts for the matter in that background configuration. Crucially, this probability distribution is positive definite and real so that there is no sign problem. When the underlying PEPS is Gaussian, tensor network contraction can be done efficiently, and in this scenario the Ansatz has been tested well numerically. In this work we propose to gauge superpositions of Gaussian PEPS and demonstrate that one can still efficiently compute observables when few Gaussians are in the superposition. As we will argue, the latter is exactly the case for bound states on top of the strongly interacting LGT vacuum, which makes this Ansatz particularly suitable for that scenario. As a corollary, we will provide an exact representation of the LGT ground state as a gauged PEPS.

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arXiv2024

Internal structure of gauge-invariant Projected Entangled Pair States

Projected entangled pair states (PEPS) are very useful in the description of strongly correlated systems, partly because they allow encoding symmetries, either global or local (gauge), naturally. In recent years, PEPS with local symmetries have increasingly been used in the study of non-perturbative regimes of lattice gauge theories, most prominently as a way to construct variational ansatz states depending only on a small number of parameters and yet capturing the relevant physical properties. For the case of one-dimensional PEPS (Matrix Product States - MPS) a bidirectional connection was established between the internal structure of the tensor network, i.e. the mathematical properties of the constituent tensors, and the symmetry. In higher dimensions this has only been done for global symmetries, where in the local (gauge) case it is known only how to construct gauge-invariant states, but not what the symmetry implies on the internal structure of the PEPS. In the present work we complete this missing piece and study the internal structure of projected entangled pair states with a gauge symmetry. The PEPS we consider consist of matter and gauge field tensors placed on the vertices and edges, respectively, of arbitrary graphs.

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arXiv2024

Truncation-Free Quantum Simulation of Pure-Gauge Compact QED Using Josephson Arrays

Quantum simulation is one of the methods that have been proposed and used in practice to bypass computational challenges in the investigation of lattice gauge theories. While most of the proposals rely on truncating the infinite dimensional Hilbert spaces that these models feature, we propose a truncation-free method based on the exact analogy between the local Hilbert space of lattice QED and that of a Josephson junction. We provide several proposals, mostly semi-analog, arranged according to experimental difficulty. Our method can simulate a quasi-2D system of up to $2\times N$ plaquettes, and we present an approximate method that can simulate the fully-2D theory, but is more demanding experimentally and not immediately feasible. This sets the ground for analog quantum simulation of lattice gauge theories with superconducting circuits, in a completely Hilbert space truncation-free procedure, for continuous gauge groups.

hep-lat↗

arXiv2024

Nonperturbative signatures of fractons in the twisted multiflavor Schwinger Model

Gauge-field configurations with nontrivial topology have profound consequences for the physics of Abelian and non-Abelian gauge theories. Over time, arguments have been gathering for the existence of gauge-field configurations with fractional topological charge, called fractons. Ground-state properties of gauge theories can drastically change in presence of fractons in the path integral. However, understanding the origin of such fractons is usually restricted to semiclassical argumentation. Here, we show that fractons persist in strongly correlated many-body systems, using the multiflavor Schwinger model of quantum electrodynamics as a paradigm example. Through detailed numerical tensor-network analysis, we find strong fracton signatures even in highly discretized lattice models, at sizes that are implementable on already existing quantum-simulation devices. Our work sheds light on how the nontrivial topology of gauge theories persists in challenging nonperturbative regimes, and it shows a path forward to probing it in tabletop experiments.

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arXiv2024

Gauged Gaussian PEPS -- A High Dimensional Tensor Network Formulation for Lattice Gauge Theories

Gauge theories form the basis of our understanding of modern physics - ranging from the description of quarks and gluons to effective models in condensed matter physics. In the non-perturbative regime, gauge theories are conventionally treated discretely as lattice gauge theories. The resulting systems are evaluated with path-integral based Monte Carlo methods. These methods, however, can suffer from the sign problem and do not allow for a direct evaluation of real-time dynamics. In this work, we present a unified and comprehensive framework for gauged Gaussian Projected Entangled Pair States (PEPS), a variational ansatz based on tensor networks. We review the construction of Hamiltonian lattice gauge theories, explain their similarities with PEPS, and detail the construction of the state. The estimation of ground states is based on a variational Monte Carlo procedure with the PEPS as an ansatz state. This sign-problem-free ansatz can be efficiently evaluated in any dimension with arbitrary gauge groups, and can include dynamical fermionic matter, suggesting new options for the simulation of non-perturbative regimes of gauge theories, including QCD.

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arXiv2024

Real-space blocking of qubit variables on parallel lattice gauge theory links for quantum simulation

One of the methods proposed in the last years for studying non-perturbative gauge theory physics is quantum simulation, where lattice gauge theories are mapped onto quantum devices which can be built in the laboratory, or quantum computers. While being very promising and already showing some experimental results, these methods still face several challenges related to the interface between the technological capabilities and the demands of the simulated models; in particular, one such challenge is the need to simulate infinitely dimensional local Hilbert spaces, describing the gauge fields on the links in the case of compact Lie gauge groups, requiring some truncations and approximations which are not completely understood or controllable in the general case. This work proposes a way to obtain arbitrarily large such local Hilbert spaces by using coarse graining of simple, low dimensional qubit systems, made of components available on most quantum simulation platforms, and thus opening the way of new types of lattice gauge theory quantum simulations.

hep-lat↗

arXiv2024

Entanglement and confinement in lattice gauge theory tensor networks

We develop a transfer operator approach for the calculation of Rényi entanglement entropies in arbitrary (i.e. Abelian and non-Abelian) pure lattice gauge theory projected entangled pair states in 2+1 dimensions. It is explicitly shown how the long-range behavior of these quantities gives rise to an entanglement area law in both the thermodynamic limit and in the continuum. We numerically demonstrate the applicability of our method to the $Z_2$ lattice gauge theory and relate some entanglement properties to the confinement-deconfinement transition therein. We provide evidence that Rényi entanglement entropies in certain cases do not provide a complete probe of (de)confinement properties compared to Wilson loop expectation values as other genuine (nonlocal) observables.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2024

Superselection-Resolved Entanglement in Lattice Gauge Theories: A Tensor Network Approach

Lattice gauge theories (LGT) play a central role in modern physics, providing insights into high-energy physics, condensed matter physics, and quantum computation. Due to the nontrivial structure of the Hilbert space of LGT systems, entanglement in such systems is tricky to define. However, when one limits themselves to superselection-resolved entanglement, that is, entanglement corresponding to specific gauge symmetry sectors (commonly denoted as superselection sectors), this problem disappears, and the entanglement becomes well-defined. The study of superselection-resolved entanglement is interesting in LGT for an additional reason: when the gauge symmetry is strictly obeyed, superselection-resolved entanglement becomes the only distillable contribution to the entanglement. In our work, we study the behavior of superselection-resolved entanglement in LGT systems. We employ a tensor network construction for gauge-invariant systems as defined by Zohar and Burrello (2016) and find that, in a vast range of cases, the leading term in superselection-resolved entanglement depends on the number of corners in the partition, that is, corner-law entanglement. To our knowledge, this is the first case of such a corner-law being observed in any lattice system.

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arXiv2023

Fermionic Gaussian PEPS in $3+1d$: Rotations and Relativistic Limits

Fermionic Gaussian Projected Entangled Pair States are fermionic tensor network state constructions which describe the physics of ground states of non-interacting fermionic Hamiltonians. As non-interacting states, one may study and analyze them very efficiently, in both analytical and numerical means. Recently it was shown that they may be used as the starting point - after applying so-called PEPS gauging mechanisms - for variational study of lattice gauge theories. This is done using sign-problem free variational Monte-Carlo. In this work we show how to generalize such states from two to three spatial dimensions, focusing on spin representations and requirements of lattice rotations. We present constructions which are crucial for the application of the above mentioned variational Monte-Carlo techniques for studying non-perturbative lattice gauge theory physics, with fermionic matter, in $2+1$-d and $3+1$-d models. Thus, the constructions presented here are crucial for the study of non-trivial lattice gauge theories with fermionic tensor network states.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2023

Resource-Efficient Quantum Simulation of Lattice Gauge Theories in Arbitrary Dimensions: Solving for Gauss' Law and Fermion Elimination

Quantum simulation of Lattice Gauge Theories has been proposed and used as a method to overcome theoretical difficulties in dealing with the non-perturbative nature of such models. In this work we focus on two important bottlenecks that make developing such simulators hard: one is the difficulty of simulating fermionic degrees of freedom, and the other is the redundancy of the Hilbert space, which leads to a waste of experimental resources and the need to impose and monitor the local symmetry constraints of gauge theories. This has previously been tackled in one dimensional settings, using non-local methods. Here we show an alternative procedure for dealing with these problems, which removes the matter and the Hilbert space redundancy, and is valid for higher space dimensions. We demonstrate it for a $\mathbb{Z}_2$ lattice gauge theory and implement it experimentally via the IBMQ cloud quantum computing platform.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2023

Variational quantum simulation of U(1) lattice gauge theories with qudit systems

Lattice gauge theories are fundamental to various fields, including particle physics, condensed matter, and quantum information theory. Recent progress in the control of quantum systems allows for studying Abelian lattice gauge theories in table-top experiments. However, several challenges remain, such as implementing dynamical fermions in higher spatial dimensions and magnetic field terms. Here, we map D-dimensional U(1) Abelian lattice gauge theories onto qudit systems with local interactions for arbitrary D. We propose a variational quantum simulation scheme for the qudit system with a local Hamiltonian, that can be implemented on a universal qudit quantum device as the one developed in [Nat. Phys. 18, 1053-1057 (2022)]. We describe how to implement the variational imaginary-time evolution protocol for ground state preparation as well as the variational real-time evolution protocol to simulate non-equilibrium physics on universal qudit quantum computers, supplemented with numerical simulations. Our proposal can serve as a way of simulating lattice gauge theories, particularly in higher spatial dimensions, with minimal resources, regarding both system sizes and gate count.

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