Performance of the time-dependent variational principle for matrix product states in long-time evolution of a pure state

Abstract

The projection of time-dependent variational principle (TDVP) for matrix product states enables us to perform long-time simulations of one-dimensional quantum systems with the conservation of the total energy and the norm of wave functions. We compare long-time dynamics after a quantum quench simulated by TDVP with those by the exact diagonalization method in order to evaluate the performance of TDVP. We show that in a nonintegrable model the projection of TDVP clearly improves the long-time behaviors of global observables included in the Hamiltonian, such as the kinetic and interaction energies. In contrast, this projection can lead to larger error for other observables than that caused by the truncation of states.