Geometric integration of classical spin dynamics via a mean-field Schrödinger equation

Abstract

The Landau-Lifshitz equation describes the time evolution of magnetic dipoles and can be derived by taking the classical limit of a quantum mechanical spin Hamiltonian. To take this limit, one constrains the many-body quantum state to a tensor product of coherent states, thereby neglecting entanglement between sites. Expectation values of the quantum spin operators produce the usual classical spin dipoles. One may also consider expectation values of polynomials of the spin operators, leading to quadrupole and higher-order spin moments, which satisfy a dynamical equation of motion that generalizes the Landau-Lifshitz dynamics [Zhang and Batista, Phys. Rev. B 104, 104409 (2021)]. Here we reformulate the dynamics of these ${N}^{2}\ensuremath{-}1$ generalized spin components as a mean-field Schr\"odinger equation on the $N$-dimensional coherent state. This viewpoint suggests efficient integration methods that respect the local symplectic structure of the classical spin dynamics.