We present numerical results for the equation of state of an infinite chain of hydrogen atoms. A variety of modern many-body methods are employed, with exhaustive cross-checks and validation. Approaches for reaching the continuous space limit and the thermodynamic limit are investigated, proposed, and tested. The detailed comparisons provide a benchmark for assessing the current state of the art in many-body computation, and for the development of new methods. The ground-state energy per atom in the linear chain is accurately determined versus bondlength, with a confidence bound given on all uncertainties.

We present the density matrix renormalization group self-consistent field (DMRG-SCF) approach that is analogous to the complete active space self-consisted field (CASSCF) method but instead of using for the description of the active space the full configuration interaction (FCI) method, the DMRG-SCF uses the density matrix renormalization group (DMRG) method. The DMRG-SCF approach, similarly to CASSCF, properly describes the multiconfigurational character of the wave function but avoids the exponential scaling of the FCI method and replaces it with a polynomial scaling. Hence, calculations for a larger number of orbitals and electrons in the active space are possible since the DMRG method provides an efficient tool to automatically select from the full Hilbert space the many-body contracted basis states that are the most important for the description of the wave function.

We investigate the dynamical mean-field theory (DMFT) from a quantum chemical perspective. Dynamical mean-field theory offers a formalism to extend quantum chemical methods for finite systems to infinite periodic problems within a local correlation approximation. In addition, quantum chemical techniques can be used to construct new ab initio Hamiltonians and impurity solvers for DMFT. Here, we explore some ways in which these things may be achieved. First, we present an informal overview of dynamical mean-field theory to connect to quantum chemical language. Next, we describe an implementation of dynamical mean-field theory where we start from an ab initio Hartree-Fock Hamiltonian that avoids double counting issues present in many applications of DMFT. We then explore the use of the configuration interaction hierarchy in DMFT as an approximate solver for the impurity problem. We also investigate some numerical issues of convergence within DMFT. Our studies are carried out in the context of the cubic hydrogen model, a simple but challenging test for correlation methods. Finally, we finish with some conclusions for future directions.

We report an implementation of self-consistent Green's function many-body theory within a second-order approximation (GF2) for application with molecular systems. This is done by iterative solution of the Dyson equation expressed in matrix form in an atomic orbital basis, where the Green's function and self-energy are built on the imaginary frequency and imaginary time domain, respectively, and fast Fourier transform is used to efficiently transform these quantities as needed. We apply this method to several archetypical examples of strong correlation, such as a H32 finite lattice that displays a highly multireference electronic ground state even at equilibrium lattice spacing. In all cases, GF2 gives a physically meaningful description of the metal to insulator transition in these systems, without resorting to spin-symmetry breaking. Our results show that self-consistent Green's function many-body theory offers a viable route to describing strong correlations while remaining within a computationally tractable single-particle formalism.

The development of polynomial cost solvers for correlated quantum impurity models, with controllable errors, is a central challenge in quantum many-body physics, where these models find applications ranging from nano-science to the dynamical mean-field theory (DMFT). Here we describe how configuration interaction (CI) approximations to exact diagonalization (ED) may be used as solvers in DMFT. CI approximations retain the main advantages of ED, such as the ability to treat general interactions and off-diagonal hybridizations and to obtain real spectral information, but are of polynomial cost. Furthermore, their errors can be controlled by monitoring the convergence of physical quantities as a function of the CI hierarchy. Using benchmark DMFT applications, such as single-site DMFT of the 1D Hubbard model and 2 × 2 cluster DMFT of the 2D Hubbard model, we show that CI approximations allow us to obtain near-exact ED results for a tiny fraction of the cost. This is true over the entire range of interaction strengths including "difficult" regimes, such as in the pseudogap phase of the 2D Hubbard model. We use the ability of CI approximations to treat large numbers of orbitals to demonstrate convergence of the bath representation in the 2 × 2 cluster DMFT using a 24 bath orbital representation. CI approximations thus form a promising route to extend ED to problems that are currently difficult to study using other solvers such as continuous-time quantum Monte Carlo, including impurity models with large numbers of orbitals and general interactions.