  We propose a formalism to study dynamical properties of a quantum many-body
system in the thermodynamic limit by studying a finite system with infinite
boundary conditions (IBC) where both finite size effects and boundary effects
have been eliminated. For one-dimensional systems, infinite boundary conditions
are obtained by attaching two boundary sites to a finite system, where each of
these two sites effectively represents a semi-infinite extension of the system.
One can then use standard finite-size matrix product state techniques to study
a region of the system while avoiding many of the complications normally
associated with finite-size calculations such as boundary Friedel oscillations.
We illustrate the technique with an example of time evolution of a local
perturbation applied to an infinite (translationally invariant) ground state,
and use this to calculate the spectral function of the S=1 Heisenberg spin
chain. This approach is more efficient and more accurate than conventional
simulations based on finite-size matrix product state and density-matrix
renormalization-group approaches.
