Automatic differentiation for second renormalization of tensor networks

Abstract

Tensor renormalization group (TRG) constitutes an important methodology for accurate simulations of strongly correlated lattice models. Facilitated by the automatic differentiation technique widely used in deep learning, we propose a uniform framework of differentiable TRG ($\partial$TRG) that can be applied to improve various TRG methods, in an automatic fashion. Essentially, $\partial$TRG systematically extends the concept of second renormalization [PRL 103, 160601 (2009)] where the tensor environment is computed recursively in the backward iteration, in the sense that given the forward process of TRG, $\partial$TRG automatically finds the gradient through backpropagation, with which one can deeply "train" the tensor networks. We benchmark $\partial$TRG in solving the square-lattice Ising model, and demonstrate its power by simulating one- and two-dimensional quantum systems at finite temperature. The deep optimization as well as GPU acceleration renders $\partial$TRG manybody simulations with high efficiency and accuracy.