Fig. 2: Schematics of the encoding for DMRG.

The bonds of the spin-1 lattice gauge theory in Eq. (2) are broken in half. Super-sites (dashed circles) enclose the original matter sites of the chain and two “half-links", except at the edges, where one “half-link" is dropped as the original chain terminates with sites. In each super-site, the right “half-links" host spin-\(\frac{1}{2}\) degrees of freedom, while spin-1 operators live in those on the left.