Numerical solution of large scale Hartree-Fock-Bogoliubov equations

Abstract: The Hartree-Fock-Bogoliubov (HFB) theory is the starting point for treating superconducting systems. However, the computational cost for solving large scale HFB equations can be much larger than that of the Hartree-Fock equations, particularly when the Hamiltonian matrix is sparse, and the number of electrons $N$ is relatively small compared to the matrix size $N_{b}$. We first provide a concise and relatively self-contained review of the HFB theory for general finite sized quantum systems, with special focus on the treatment of spin symmetries from a linear algebra perspective. We then demonstrate that the pole expansion and selected inversion (PEXSI) method can be particularly well suited for solving large scale HFB equations. For a Hubbard-type Hamiltonian, the cost of PEXSI is at most $\Or(N_b^2)$ for both gapped and gapless systems, which can be significantly faster than the standard cubic scaling diagonalization methods. We show that PEXSI can solve a two-dimensional Hubbard-Hofstadter model with $N_b$ up to $2.88\times 10^6$, and the wall clock time is less than $100$ s using $17280$ CPU cores. This enables the simulation of physical systems under experimentally realizable magnetic fields, which cannot be otherwise simulated with smaller systems.