Universal Critical Behaviours in Non-Hermitian Phase Transitions

Abstract Quantum phase transitions occur in non-Hermitian systems. In this work we show that density functional theory, for the first time, uncovers universal critical behaviors for quantum phase transitions and quantum entanglement in non-Hermitian many-body systems. To be specific, we first prove...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Bo-Bo Wei, Liang Jin
Format: article
Language:EN
Published: Nature Portfolio 2017
Subjects:
R
Q
Online Access:https://doaj.org/article/da53ceeb825a4b69847e5cd97da6a40c
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Summary:Abstract Quantum phase transitions occur in non-Hermitian systems. In this work we show that density functional theory, for the first time, uncovers universal critical behaviors for quantum phase transitions and quantum entanglement in non-Hermitian many-body systems. To be specific, we first prove that the non-degenerate steady state of a non-Hermitian quantum many body system is a universal function of the first derivative of the steady state energy with respect to the control parameter. This finding has far-reaching consequences for non-Hermitian systems. First, it bridges the non-analytic behavior of physical observable and no-analytic behavior of steady state energy, which explains why the quantum phase transitions in non-Hermitian systems occur for finite systems. Second, it predicts universal scaling behaviors of any physical observable at non-Hermitian phase transition point with scaling exponent being (1 − 1/p) with p being the number of coalesced states at the exceptional point. Third, it reveals that quantum entanglement in non-Hermitian phase transition point presents universal scaling behaviors with critical exponents being (1 − 1/p). These results uncover universal critical behaviors in non-Hermitian phase transitions and provide profound connections between entanglement and phase transition in non-Hermitian quantum many-body physics.