Open quantum cluster embedding theory
Phys. Rev. B 114, 115122 – Published 19 August, 2026
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/2x7d-895g
Abstract
The simulation of strongly correlated electron systems remains a formidable challenge. Certain experimentally relevant dynamical response functions are especially difficult to calculate, because of issues of finite-size effects and the ill-posed analytic continuation. To address this, we propose the quantum cluster embedding theory, an embedded cluster method aimed at computing the response of the system following an external perturbation; the frequency-dependent dynamical susceptibility is obtained subsequently by means of inverse linear response theory. The embedded clusters, used within the method as representatives of short-range correlations, are open quantum systems governed by the Lindblad equation. The short-range correlations extracted from the clusters are used to close the equations of motion for the fermionic bilinear and the local double occupancy on the lattice. In turn, the clusters' Markovian baths are tuned to keep the bilinear and the double occupancy expectation values on the clusters and the lattice identical, throughout the concomitant evolution of the two sets of equations. The theory becomes numerically exact in the noninteracting, atomic, and infinite-cluster-size limits, and it respects the total charge and energy conservation laws. We show that our approach can treat very large lattices while avoiding analytic continuation through the explicit time evolution. Finally, we compute the charge-charge correlation function in the square lattice Hubbard model and compare with a recent cold atom experiment, finding good qualitative agreement.
