Holographic unitary renormalization group for correlated electrons - I: A tensor network approach

Abstract

We present a unified framework for the renormalisation of the Hamiltonian and eigenbasis of a system of correlated electrons, unveiling thereby the interplay between electronic correlations and many-particle entanglement. For this, we extend substantially the unitary renormalization group (URG) scheme introduced in Refs. [1–3]. We recast the RG as a discrete flow of the Hamiltonian tensor network, i.e., the collection of various 2n-point scattering vertex tensors comprising the Hamiltonian. The renormalisation progresses via unitary transformations that block diagonalizes the Hamiltonian iteratively via the disentanglement of single-particle eigenstates. This procedure incorporates naturally the role of quantum fluctuations. The RG flow equations possess a non-trivial structure, displaying a feedback mechanism through frequency-dependent dynamical self-energies and correlation energies. The interplay between various UV energy scales enables the coupled RG equations to flow towards a stable fixed point in the IR. The effective Hamiltonian at the IR fixed point generically has a reduced parameter space, as well as number of degrees of freedom, compared to the microscopic Hamiltonian. Importantly, the vertex RG flows are observed to govern the RG flow of the tensor network that denotes the coefficients of the many-particle eigenstates. The RG evolution of various many-particle entanglement features of the eigenbasis are, in turn, quantified through the coefficient tensor network. In this way, we show that the URG framework provides a microscopic understanding of holographic renormalisation: the RG flow of the vertex tensor network generates a eigenstate coefficient tensor network possessing a many-particle entanglement metric. We find that the eigenstate tensor network accommodates sign factors arising from fermion exchanges, and that the IR fixed point reached generically involves a trivialisation of the fermion sign factor. Several results are presented for the emergence of composite excitations in the neighbourhood of a gapless Fermi surface, as well as for the condensation phenomenon involving the gapping of the Fermi surface.