Physics

Dr. Hitesh J. Changlani
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

The accurate numerical simulation of strongly correlated electronic systems remains a challenge, but there have been significant recent advances in this area. My talk will focus on tensor network methods (in particular, the density matrix renormalization group (DMRG)), which have helped develop our understanding of quantum systems in low dimensions. In addition to providing reliable simulation tools, these methods have highlighted the importance of analyzing the structure of many-body wavefunctions via their reduced density matrices and have created a universal language for describing quantum phases. I will present aspects of DMRG in the context of our work on the two dimensional frustrated spin-1 kagome lattice antiferromagnet, a system which several experimental groups have realized. Contrary to previous theoretical proposals, our results provide evidence that the ground state is a valence bond (simplex) solid and yield a spin gap consistent with experimental findings.