A Wang-Landau method for calculating Renyi entropies in finite-temperature quantum Monte Carlo simulations

Stephen Inglis, Roger G. Melko

Published 2012-07-20, updated 2012-07-30Version 2

We implement a Wang-Landau sampling technique in quantum Monte Carlo (QMC) for the purpose of calculating the Renyi entanglement entropies and associated mutual information. The algorithm converges an estimate for an analogue to the density of states for Stochastic Series Expansion QMC allowing a direct calculation of Renyi entropies without explicit thermodynamic integration. We benchmark results for the mutual information on two-dimensional (2D) isotropic and anisotropic Heisenberg models, 2D transverse field Ising model, and 3D Heisenberg model, confirming a critical scaling of the mutual information in cases with a finite-temperature transition. We discuss the benefits and limitations of broad sampling techniques compared to standard importance sampling methods.