High Energy Physics Seminar

Hamiltonian truncation is a quantum variational method that consists of minimizing the energy on a truncated finite basis of Hilbert space. A straightforward application of this method to quantum field theory would seem to be hopeless, since generic states in the Hilbert space have an exponentially small overlap with physical states. Nonetheless, I will give evidence that Hamiltonian truncation may converge as a power law in the computational time when formulated on the lattice. I will first explain the effective field theory of Hamiltonian in the continuum, and explain why this is approach is doomed for all but the simplest low-dimensional quantum field theories. Then I will present arguments and preliminary numerical results on the lattice that suggest that Hamiltonian truncation may be competitive with other approaches, such as tensor product states and Monte Carlo evaluation of the Euclidean path integral.The talk is in 469 Lauritsen.

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