Monte Carlo simulations of two-dimensional fermion systems with string-bond states

Abstract: We describe an application of variational Monte Carlo to two-dimensional fermionic systems within the recently developed tensor-network string-bond state (SBS) ansatz. We use a combination of variational Monte Carlo and stochastic optimization to optimize the matrix-product state matrices representing the ground state. We present results for a two-dimensional spinless fermion model including nearest-neighbor Coulomb interactions and determine using finite-size scaling the phase boundary between charge-ordered insulating and metallic phases. This approach can treat frustrated systems and be easily extended to for fermions with spin.