We show that recursively generated Chebyshev expansions offer numerically efficient representations for calculating zero-temperature spectral functions of one-dimensional lattice models using matrix product state (MPS) methods. The main features of this Chebyshev matrix product state (CheMPS) approach are as follows: (i) it achieves uniform resolution over the spectral function’s entire spectral width; (ii) it can exploit the fact that the latter can be much smaller than the model’s many-body bandwidth; (iii) it offers a well-controlled broadening scheme that allows finite-size effects to be either resolved or smeared out, as desired; (iv) it is based on using MPS tools to recursively calculate a succession of Chebyshev vectors $|t_n\rangle$, (v) the entanglement entropies of which were found to remain bounded with increasing recursion order $n$ for all cases analyzed here; and (vi) it distributes the total entanglement entropy that accumulates with increasing $n$ over the set of Chebyshev vectors $|t_n\rangle$, which need not be combined into a single vector. In this way, the growth in entanglement entropy that usually limits density matrix renormalization group (DMRG) approaches is packaged into conveniently manageable units. We present zero-temperature CheMPS results for the structure factor of spin-$\frac{1}{2}$ antiferromagnetic Heisenberg chains and perform a detailed finite-size analysis. Making comparisons to three benchmark methods, we find that CheMPS (a) yields results comparable in quality to those of correction-vector DMRG, at dramatically reduced numerical cost; (b) agrees well with Bethe ansatz results for an infinite system, within the limitations expected for numerics on finite systems; and (c) can also be applied in the time domain, where it has potential to serve as a viable alternative to time-dependent DMRG (in particular, at finite temperatures). Finally, we present a detailed error analysis of CheMPS for the case of the noninteracting resonant level model.

• Received 29 January 2011

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevB.83.195115