Bounding the finite-size error of quantum many-body dynamics simulations

Finite-size error (FSE), the discrepancy between an observable in a finite system and in the thermodynamic limit, is ubiquitous in numerical simulations of quantum many body systems. Although a rough estimate of these errors can be obtained from a sequence of finite-size results, a strict, quantitative bound on the magnitude of FSE is still missing. Here we derive rigorous upper bounds on the FSE of local observables in real time quantum dynamics simulations initialized from a product state. In d-dimensional locally interacting systems with a finite local Hilbert space, our bound implies |langle hat{S}(t)rangle_L-langle hat{S}(t)rangle_infty|leq C(2v t/L)^cL-μ, with v, C, c, μ constants independent of L and t, which we compute explicitly. For periodic boundary conditions (PBC), the constant c is twice as large as that for open boundary conditions (OBC), suggesting that PBC have smaller FSE than OBC at early times. The bound can be generalized to a large class of correlated initial states as well. As a byproduct, we prove that the FSE of local observables in ground state simulations decays exponentially with L, under a suitable spectral gap condition. Our bounds are practically useful in determining the validity of finite-size results, as we demonstrate in simulations of the one-dimensional (1D) quantum Ising and Fermi-Hubbard models.