Abstract
Thanks to the high compression of the matrix product state (MPS) form of the wave
function and the efficient site-by-site iterative sweeping optimization algorithm, den-
sity matrix normalization group (DMRG) and its time-dependent variant (TD-DMRG)
have been established as powerful computational tools in accurately simulating the elec-
tronic structure and quantum dynamics of strongly correlated molecules with a large
number (10 1−2 ) of quantum degrees of freedom (active orbitals or vibrational modes).
However, the quantitative characterization of the quantum many-body behaviors of
realistic strongly correlated systems requires a further consideration of the interaction
between the embedded active subsystem and the remaining correlated environment,
e.g., a larger number (10 2−3 ) of external orbitals in electronic structure, or infinite
condensed-phase phononic modes in nucleus dynamics. To this end, we introduced
three new post-DMRG and TD-DMRG approaches, namely (1) DMRG2sCI-MRCI and
DMRG2sCI-ENPT by the reconstruction of selected configuration interaction (sCI)
type of compact reference function from DMRG coefficients and the use of externally
contracted MRCI (multi-reference configuration interaction) and Epstein-Nesbet per-
turbation theory (ENPT), without recourse to the expensive high order n-electron
reduced density matrices (n-RDMs). (2) DMRG combined with RR-MRCI (renormal-
ized residue-based MRCI) which improves the computational accuracy and efficiency of
internally contracted (ic) MRCI by renormalizing the contracted bases with small-sized
buffer environment(s) of few external orbitals as probes based on quantum informa-
tion theory. (3) HM (hierarchical mapping)-TD-DMRG in which a large environment
is reduced to a small number of renormalized environmental modes (which accounts
for the most vital system-environment interactions) through stepwise mapping trans-
formation. These advances extend the efficacy of highly accurate DMRG/TD-DMRG
computations to the quantitative characterization of the electronic structure and quan-
tum dynamics in realistic strongly correlated systems coupled with large environments,
and are reviewed in this paper.