Density matrix renormalization group boosted by Gutzwiller projected wave functions

Abstract

We propose to boost the performance of the density matrix renormalization group (DMRG) in two dimensions by using Gutzwiller projected states as the initialization ansatz. When the Gutzwiller projected state is properly chosen, the notorious "local minimum" issue in DMRG can be circumvented and the precision of DMRG can be improved by orders of magnitude without extra computational cost. Moreover, this method allows to quantify the closeness of the initial Gutzwiller projected state and the final converged state after DMRG sweeps, thereby sheds light on whether the Gutzwiller ansatz captures the essential entanglement features of the actual ground state for a given Hamiltonian. The Kitaev honeycomb model has been exploited to demonstrate and benchmark this new method.