Zero-temperature renormalization method for quantum systems. I. Ising model in a transverse field in one dimension

A zero-temperature real-space renormalization-group method is presented and applied to the quantum Ising model with a transverse field in one dimension. The transition between the low-field and high-field regimes is studied. Magnetization components, spin correlation functions, and critical exponents are derived and checked against the exact results. It is shown that increasing the size of the blocks in the iterative procedure yields more accurate results, especially for the critical "magnetic" exponents near the transition.