Controlled bond expansion for DMRG ground state search at single-site costs

DMRG ground state search algorithms employing symmetries must be able to expand virtual bond spaces by adding or changing symmetry sectors if these lower the energy. Traditional single-site DMRG does not allow bond expansion; two-site DMRG does, but at much higher computational costs. We present a controlled bond expansion (CBE) algorithm that yields two-site accuracy and convergence per sweep, at single-site costs. Given a matrix product state \(\Psi\) defining a variational space, CBE identifies parts of the orthogonal space carrying significant weight in \(H\Psi\) and expands bonds to include only these. CBE-DMRG uses no mixing parameters and is fully variational. Using CBE-DMRG, we show that the Kondo-Heisenberg model on a width 4 cylinder features two distinct phases differing in their Fermi surface volumes.