Finite-Temperature Dynamical Density Matrix Renormalization Group and the Drude Weight of Spin-1/2 Chains

We propose an easily implemented approach to study time-dependent correlation functions of one-dimensional systems at finite-temperature T using the density matrix renormalization group. The entanglement growth inherent to any time-dependent calculation is significantly reduced if the auxiliary degrees of freedom which purify the statistical operator are time evolved with the physical Hamiltonian but reversed time. We exploit this to investigate the long-time behavior of current correlation functions of the XXZ spin-1/2 Heisenberg chain. This allows a direct extraction of the Drude weight D at intermediate to large T. We find that D is nonzero-and thus transport is dissipationless-everywhere in the gapless phase. At low temperatures we establish an upper bound to D by comparing with bosonization.