A Monte Carlo algorithm for simulating fermions on Lefschetz thimbles

Abstract

A possible solution of the notorious sign problem preventing direct Monte Carlo calculations for systems with non-zero chemical potential is to deform the integration region in the complex plane to a Lefschetz thimble. We investigate this approach for a simple fermionic model. We introduce an easy to implement Monte Carlo algorithm to sample the dominant thimble. Our algorithm relies only on the integration of the gradient flow in the numerically stable direction, which gives it a distinct advantage over the other proposed algorithms. We demonstrate the stability and efficiency of the algorithm by applying it to an exactly solvable fermionic model and compare our results with the analytical ones. We report a very good agreement for a certain region in the parameter space where the dominant contribution comes from a single thimble, including a region where standard methods suffer from a severe sign problem. However, we find that there are also regions in the parameter space where the contribution from multiple thimbles is important, even in the continuum limit.