Path-integral molecular dynamics for anyons, bosons, and fermions

Quadratic scaling bosonic path integral molecular dynamics

Bosonic exchange symmetry leads to fascinating quantum phenomena, from exciton condensation in quantum materials to the superfluidity of liquid 4He. Unfortunately, path integral molecular dynamics (PIMD) simulations of bosons are computationally prohibitive beyond ∼100 particles, due to a cubic scaling with the system size. We present an algorithm that reduces the complexity from cubic to quadratic, allowing the first simulations of thousands of bosons using PIMD. Our method is orders of magnitude faster, with a speedup that scales linearly with the number of particles and the number of imaginary time slices (beads). Simulations that would have otherwise taken decades can now be done in days. In practice, the new algorithm eliminates most of the added computational cost of including bosonic exchange effects, making them almost as accessible as PIMD simulations of distinguishable particles.

Thermodynamics of fermions at any temperature based on parametrized partition function

In this work, we study the recently developed parametrized partition function formulation and show how we can infer the thermodynamic properties of fermions based on numerical simulation of bosons and distinguishable particles at various temperatures. In particular, we show that in the three-dimensional space defined by energy, temperature, and the parameter characterizing parametrized partition function, we can map the energies of bosons and distinguishable particles to fermionic energies through constant-energy contours. We apply this idea to both noninteracting and interacting Fermi systems and show it is possible to infer the fermionic energies at all temperatures, thus providing a practical and efficient approach to obtain thermodynamic properties of Fermi systems with numerical simulation. As an example, we present energies and heat capacities for 10 noninteracting fermions and 10 interacting fermions and show good agreement with the analytical result for the noninteracting case.

On the thermodynamic properties of fictitious identical particles and the application to fermion sign problem

By generalizing the recently developed path integral molecular dynamics for identical bosons and fermions, we consider the finite-temperature <p>thermodynamic properties of fictitious identical particles with a real parameter ξ interpolating continuously between bosons (ξ=1) and fermions (ξ=-1). Through general analysis and numerical experiments we find that the average energy may have good analytical property as a function of this real parameter ξ, which provides the chance to calculate the thermodynamical properties of identical fermions by an extrapolation with a simple polynomial function after accurately calculating the thermodynamic properties of the fictitious particles for ξ{greater than or equal to}0. Using several examples, it is shown that our method can efficiently give accurate energy values for finite-temperature fermionic systems. Our work provides a chance to circumvent the fermion sign problem for some quantum systems.