Exact continuum representation of long-range interacting systems

Continuum limits are a powerful tool in the study of many-body systems, yet their validity is often unclear when long-range interactions are present. In this work, we rigorously address this issue and put forth an exact representation of long-range interacting lattices that separates the model into a term describing its continuous analogue, the integral contribution, and a term that fully resolves the microstructure, the lattice contribution. For any system dimension, any lattice, any power-law interaction and for linear, nonlinear, and multi-atomic lattices, we show that the lattice contribution can be described by a differential operator based on the multidimensional generalization of the Riemann zeta function, namely the Epstein zeta function. We determine the conditions under which this contribution becomes particularly relevant, demonstrating the existence of quasi scale-invariant lattice contributions in a wide range of fundamental physical phenomena. Our representation provides a broad set of tools for studying the analytical properties of the system and it yields an efficient numerical method for the evaluation of the arising lattice sums. We benchmark its performance by computing classical forces and energies in three important physical examples, in which the standard continuum approximation fails: Skyrmions in a two-dimensional long-range interacting spin lattice, defects in ion chains, and spin waves in a three-dimensional pyrochlore lattice with dipolar interactions. We demonstrate that our method exhibits the accuracy of exact summation at the numerical cost of an integral approximation, allowing for precise simulations of long-range interacting systems even at macroscopic scales. We apply our analytical tool set to the study of quantum spin lattices and derive anomalous quantum spin wave dispersion relations due to long-range interactions in arbitrary dimensions