Capturing Long-Range Memory Structures with Tree-Geometry Process Tensors

Abstract

We introduce a class of quantum non-Markovian processes—dubbed process trees—that exhibit polynomially decaying temporal correlations and memory distributed across timescales. This class of processes is described by a tensor network with treelike geometry whose component tensors are (1) causality-preserving maps (superprocesses) and (2) locality-preserving temporal change-of-scale transformations. We show that the long-range correlations in this class of processes tends to originate almost entirely from memory effects and can accommodate genuinely quantum power-law correlations in time. Importantly, this class allows efficient computation of multitime correlation functions. To showcase the potential utility of this model-agnostic class for numerical simulation of physical models, we show how it can efficiently approximate the strong memory dynamics of the paradigmatic spin-boson model, in terms of arbitrary multitime features. In contrast to an equivalently costly matrix-product-operator representation, the ansatz produces a fiducial characterization of the relevant physics. Finally, leveraging 2D tensor-network renormalization-group methods, we detail an algorithm for deriving a process tree from an underlying Hamiltonian via the Feynmann-Vernon influence functional. Our work lays the foundation for the development of more efficient numerical techniques in the field of strongly interacting open quantum systems, as well as the theoretical development of a temporal renormalization-group scheme.