Symmetry-conserving purification of quantum states within the density matrix renormalization group

The density matrix renormalization group (DMRG) algorithm was originally designed to efficiently compute the zero-temperature or ground-state properties of one-dimensional strongly correlated quantum systems. The development of the algorithm at finite temperature has been a topic of much interest, because of the usefulness of thermodynamics quantities in understanding the physics of condensed matter systems, and because of the increased complexity associated with efficiently computing temperature-dependent properties. The ancilla method is a DMRG technique that enables the computation of these thermodynamic quantities. In this paper, we review the ancilla method, and improve its performance by working on reduced Hilbert spaces and using canonical approaches. We furthermore explore its applicability beyond spins systems to t-J and Hubbard models.