title: Properties of quantum systems via diagonalization of transition amplitudes. I. Discretization effects.
abstract: We analyze the method for calculation of properties of nonrelativistic quantum systems based on exact diagonalization of space-discretized short-time evolution operators. In this paper we present a detailed analysis of the errors associated with space discretization. Approaches using direct diagonalization of real-space discretized Hamiltonians lead to polynomial errors in discretization spacing Delta . Here we show that the method based on the diagonalization of the short-time evolution operators leads to substantially smaller discretization errors, vanishing exponentially with 1/Delta(2). As a result, the presented calculation scheme is particularly well suited for numerical studies of few-body quantum systems. The analytically derived discretization errors estimates are numerically shown to hold for several models. In the follow up paper [I. Vidanović, A. Bogojević, A. Balaz, and A. Belić, Phys. Rev. E 80, 066706 (2009)] we present and analyze substantial improvements that result from the merger of this approach with the recently introduced effective-action scheme for high-precision calculation of short-time propagation.
authors.affiliation: Scientific Computing Laboratory, Institute of Physics Belgrade, Pregrevica 118, Belgrade, Serbia.
authors.forename: Ivana
authors.initials: I
authors.lastname: Vidanović
authors.forename: Aleksandar
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Bogojević
authors.forename: Aleksandar
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Belić