Infinite projected entangled pair states algorithm improved: Fast full update and gauge fixing

The infinite projected entangled pair states (iPEPS) algorithm [J. Jordan et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 101, 250602 (2008)] has become a useful tool in the calculation of ground-state properties of two-dimensional quantum lattice systems in the thermodynamic limit. Despite its many successful implementations, the method has some limitations in its present formulation which hinder its application to some highly entangled systems. The purpose of this paper is to unravel some of these issues, in turn enhancing the stability and efficiency of iPEPS methods. For this, we first introduce the fast full update scheme, where effective environment and iPEPS tensors are both simultaneously updated (or evolved) throughout time. As we shall show, this implies two crucial advantages: (i) dramatic computational savings and (ii) improved overall stability. In addition, we extend the application of the local gauge fixing, successfully implemented for finite-size PEPS [M. Lubasch et al., Phys. Rev. B 90, 064425 (2014)], to the iPEPS algorithm. We see that the gauge fixing not only further improves the stability of the method but also accelerates the convergence of the alternating least-squares sweeping in the (either full or fast full) tensor update scheme. The improvement in terms of computational cost and stability of the resulting improved iPEPS algorithm is benchmarked by studying the ground-state properties of the quantum Heisenberg and transverse-field Ising models on an infinite square lattice.